


54609

by claritylore



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternative Universe - FBI, Amnesia, Canonical Character Death, Dark Will Graham, Domestic Violence, Lots of Death Basically, M/M, Medical Torture, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Murder Husbands, Original Character Death(s), Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-07 05:40:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1887069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/claritylore/pseuds/claritylore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="http://hannibalkink.dreamwidth.org/3819.html?thread=7375851#cmt7375851">this prompt</a> on the kinkmeme.</p><p>In short, this is set in a world where criminals are reconditioned with painful electrical and surgical therapies and then put into service catching other criminals. A convicted murderer from the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element is sent to the FBI to assist on the Minnesota Shrike case. Stripped of any knowledge of his former life, without so much as a name, 54609 has little choice but to use his unique empathy skills to help the FBI crack the case.</p><p>Along the way, he encounters the FBI consultant psychiatrist who got him brought in on the case, and slowly he comes to realise that Dr Hannibal Lecter's interest in him goes far beyond a professional curiosity. Can he find his lost memories and discover who he once was and, more importantly, who Dr Lecter really is?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I realise it's rather masturbatory to keep filling in my own prompts, but this one just seemed to germinate in my brain and not let go. The image of a poor gaunt Will Graham with a shaved head and a number tattooed onto his skull just caught my imagination. So here we go.
> 
> I have a horrible feeling this fic might be one of those ones that elongates itself out as it goes on, so bear with me. I'll update it as often as I possibly can. 
> 
> Tags will also be updated as I go along.

The first thing he'd seen when they'd taken him from the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element, was a bird. A raven in fact. It was perched on the sign outside the prison and it cawed at him as he passed, then watched him with a quizzical turn of the head as he was placed in the back of a car, staring back through the glass window.  
  
For all he knew, it was the first bird he'd ever seen in his life. Except that it couldn't be, since he recognised it as a bird and even knew that it was a raven. It caught his attention in the way that an alien might, strange and unfamiliar and vaguely disturbing. Why was it cawing and hopping at him in particular, he wondered. Did it know who he was, what he was, even though he didn't?  
  
54609 sat quietly in the back of the police car, eyes down, making an effort not to see any other unfamiliar sights in the outside world. It was enough to focus on the rumbling sound of the car and the shaking motion of it. A moving prison instead of a static one. He might have spent hours and hours in cars before in his life but, again, he had no idea. He felt like a child, small and powerless, with no say in his fate.  
  
The only thing he knew was that when the flashing lights started, he shouldn't ever make a sound, no matter how much the electrodes and the straps hurt, no matter how sick the drugs could make him. Making a sound only made them turn up the dials or double the doses. Those faceless men who shaved his head once a week and carried him from room to room for his daily torment, they preferred it when he broke. Dr Chilton preferred it. They liked the honesty of it.  
  
Even though the neurological treatments had apparently had the intended effect, and purged him of whatever demons had gotten him a life sentence in the facility in the first place, some tiny remaining part of whoever he had been before he was 54609 needed that small measure of defiance to survive. Like the cockroach that lived in the corner of his cell-like room, it wouldn't be moved on, no matter how many times it was nearly squashed. Silence was defiance and it was the only thing he had left.  
  
54609\. The number was tattooed across the right side of his head. A modern day branding. He had no idea how long he'd been a guest of Dr Chilton's. He didn't know what he'd done to deserve it. All he knew was, that was all he had, in place of a name or a past. Five random digits: 54609. And a few scars here and there from a life he didn't remember.  
  
The previous occupant of the room next to his, 49994, had told him that they had to have been murderers to be put in that shithole, right before he'd tested the theory by faking a seizure and murdering one of the nurses. 49994 was smashed to pieces by the guards for that little stunt and, so far as anyone knew, died of his injuries in hospital.  
  
That there were no internal investigations, no questions asked and no love lost over his death told 54609 that the bastard had probably been right. No one would be shedding tears over them if they fell out of line. The staple idea behind the reform programme, he'd gathered, was that criminals should be rehabilitated and then put to use. But rehabilitation was not an erasure of past crimes, even if they couldn't remember them. They were still, essentially, prisoners.  
  
Inmates from other quarters of the 'home' came and went, parceled out to law enforcement to do all the shittiest jobs they could find. But down on the east wing where the bars were at their thickest, no one ever got to leave. They went through the agonising rehabilitation that the law mandated but they were no less unwanted when they were done. They just sat around, listening to the dripping taps, staring at empty walls, going slowly crazy.  
  
But suddenly he was leaving. No one had told him why. He hadn't been warned about birds, or cars, or any of the other familiar-unfamiliar things that had popped up unexpectedly to assault his already fragile senses. Logically, leaving the facility shouldn't be triggering a existential crisis. He knew that. Just... no one warned him.  
  
The journey went on and on.  
  
And then, quite suddenly, they stopped. Right outside a building with the words 'Department of Justice: Federal Bureau of Investigation' emblazoned in a large circular blue logo and mounted above the entrance point.  
  
If he could have known that, within two weeks, he would be a murderer for the second time (first time to his memory), he might have tried harder to understand the implications of his being hired out to the FBI specifically. Legally, no one was allowed to tell him anything about his former life, if they knew anything, but pulling up outside that building only made him wonder if he had been in law enforcement himself at some point. Perhaps he had been a good guy, a least for a little while. Yes, perhaps he had been a good cop, pushed to the brink and over the edge. A victim of circumstances and stress. Perhaps.  
  
Beyond that slight flutter of hope, he felt numbed and more than a little disinterested as he was roughly marched inside the building and handed over to reception, hands released only long enough to be put into a newer set of cuffs with the FBI logo on them and secured around a railing off to one side. A bag was passed to the receptionist and he overheard the guards tell her that it contained a few spare jumpsuits and toiletries .  
  
He was left in the reception lobby like an inappropriate state funded art installation; a thin, pale, shaved goblin learning half against the bar his hands had been locked around, purposefully not watching the various people come and go about their business. He didn't like the thought of their eyes on him, seeing the number on his head, knowing exactly what he was, so he avoided their faces completely. His plain blue jumpsuit felt huge, like he was disappearing into it. Vaguely, he glanced around, not focusing on the agents as they glided purposefully across a buffed floor in their suits and blouses, looking around for others who were like him and finding none. Not even the janitor in the corner had a number on his head.  
  
He wondered why the guards from the Home had just left him there and walked out. Did they have important meetings to attend? Union marches to plan? Heads to bash in? It was mystifying and more than a little irritating. Another reminder of his status; a man with no rights. Not even a man really.  
  
The furball outline of a dog suddenly wandered into his eyeline and caught his attention like a dart hitting bullseye. It was a sniffer dog with a little FBI jacket strapped around its middle, held on its leash by a man in full gear. 54609 jolted forward a little, forgetting that his hands were cuffed, and was bounced back against the railing for his trouble. He had no idea why the sight of a dog gave his heart a little pang of pain and decided that maybe, on this particular thing, it was better not to know. Nothing good could come of knowing who he used to be; that was one message, repeated by Dr Chilton often, that he really had heard and inevitably taken to heart.  
  
 _You would not be here if you had not done something extremely deserving, believe me. We are not in the business of treating the innocent. We are not here to absolve you of your - some would say - **heinous** crimes, but we are here to help you. The therapeutic and rehabilitative treatments we provide are for your own good and for the good of society as a whole. The alternative is, well, there is none._  
  
It was a good twenty minutes before two agents finally came to retrieve him.  
  
"Hi. I'm Beverley Katz. This is Don Kramer. We're with Behavioural Sciences," the woman said, far too pleasantly, like he had any business holding a conversation with her.  
  
54609 ducked his head, frowning, not looking at them. He had no idea how to respond.  
  
Her speech pattern grew a little more tonally stern, his seeming lack of cooperation noted. "We've been assigned to babysit you on this case. So don't do anything stupid and we'll all get along fine." Katz turned him and removed his handcuffs. "Do I need to keep you in these?" she asked.  
  
Being asked for his opinion was an entirely new experience, and it sent an odd jolt of something into his mind. 54609 nodded towards the gun, half visible on her hip under her jacket, and shook his head. "No ma'am." He discovered his voice was rather hoarse for lack of recent use.  
  
"Good," she said.  
  
"Step out of line and you'll be sent back to whatever hole they dug you out of," the slightly portly male agent, Kramer, added.  
  
Katz walked ahead of him and Kramer walked just behind, shoving him between the shoulders to make sure he would keep up. 54609 couldn't help but look around with uncertainty as he was led into an elevator and taken through a series of brightly lit corridors and into office spaces. Every cubicle was a little slice of a life 54609 could decipher with ease but, at the same time, simply couldn't imagine. The smoker in the midst of a divorce. The woman with five kids and a fake smile. The quiet guy with a hidden musical talent and a vehement hatred for the guy in the next door cubicle. Little painted pictures of other lives slipped in and out of his imagination's grasp.  
  
Finally, they passed into a new area, a stark sign signalling their entry into the specific area where the Behavioural Sciences Unit plied their trade. He was shown into an office with the name J CRAWFORD engraved on a plaque on the outer shell of the door and placed on a seat before the imposing oak desk.  
  
A burly man in a dark brown suit and burgundy tie was standing just behind it, staring at a noticeboard with a map, each pin on it leading out to the photo of a girl. Seven pins. Seven sad dead girls. The man, presumably Crawford, took his time in turning around to 54609 and the two agents, Katz seated next to him, Kramer hovering somewhere behind them, leaning against a filing cabinet. The man looked tired. Those young faces were burned on his retinas.  
  
"You've been brought here on the advice of a consultant. We're in need of an outside perspective on this case," he said, and might have been reading out of a book, for all the empty passion behind his words. "Seven girls are missing in Minnesota and we have no leads. Nothing. For the duration of this case, your job is to examine the case files and draw up a psychological profile on the killer."  
  
54609 wanted to interject, to protest that he hadn't a clue how to draw up a psychological anything, and why would his insight be any more of interest than any of the people who did this for a living. But he couldn't quite bring himself to speak up. Something about this Crawford was innately intimadating.  
  
"You will provide a detailed summary of your findings and consult if we receive any further breaks. Agent Katz and Agent Kramer are responsible for your day to day wellbeing during your stay here and will assist you with the profile. You will assist them in the field if we get any further leads. Is that all clear?"  
  
54609 nodded, wide eyed.  
  
"Katz, take him to the lodgings and make sure he's got a copy of all the files. I don't want to see him again before it's on my desk. Got that?"  
  
She stood up and gestured for 54609 to do the same. Kramer had already opened the office door, apparently no less eager to get out of there.  
  
"Sir," 54609 finally found his voice, uncertain through it was, and cleared his throat in the silence that followed, "um, if I may... why me?"  
  
" _That_ ," Crawford boomed, "is none of your concern."  
  
54609 winced and dropped his head, wishing he hadn't said anything. Once again, it really didn't ever do him any good to make a sound. It was better to stay quiet and just follow commands.  
  
The so-called lodgings were a great deal more pleasant that the small, bare box that he lived in normally. The bed was bigger, the sheets smoother and thicker. He had a pillow that fluffed up and a desk with a lamp on it. He'd been provided with plenty to read and look at; all kinds of case files and reports, placed in an unhelpfully unlabeled and unordered pile on the side of the desk. There was even a bathroom and a private shower on hand, which felt absolutely decadent. Sure, the door was still tightly locked and there was still a camera in the corner of the ceiling, but a hot private shower he could use as many times as he wanted, that was something worth living for.  
  
He was pleasantly surprised by this sudden turn of events. Of course, the suspicion that it would all be snatched away from him again at any moment was everpresent but he resolved to make the most of it. Perhaps if he did a good job, he might be allowed to return.  
  
It was an odd thing, to hope for better things than daily torment and a long tunnel of a life leading nowhere. 54609 was very sensitive to the idea that this too might turn out to be a torture in the fullness of time; to live outside of the walls of the Home, only to have to return there in the end. It might be better not to see the light of day, if it was destined to be denied to him once again.  
  
54609 put those thoughts to the back of his mind and decided to get to work. He'd been left with the promise of them getting to work first thing in the morning but he wanted to get a head start. And it was fascinating looking through those files; almost an out of body experience, as his mind pieced together colours and shapes and drew a story for him, right up in front of him on the wall, without any effort at all. It was a peek into what must have been his previous life. He had done this before, no doubt about it. Strangely enough, it felt good to peer into a mind that was not his own, a mind filled with thoughts, unlike his own empty head.  
  
This man, the one taking these girls, was definitely a killer. He wasn't keeping them alive somewhere. 54609 knew it was perverse to enjoy the experience of charting his mind and seeing his crimes come to life. But it was what it was.  
  
At the end of the day, he was just one more killer, communing with another.  
  
*  
  
Apparently, he didn't really think like most people. This shouldn't have come as much of a shock, and yet it actually perturbed him on a visceral level. It gave Kramer and Crawford a sharpness of edge to their voices whenever he tried to explain his thoughts to them that he really found hard to cope with.  
  
But he had been right and they did at least respect that. When they'd taken him to see Elise Nichols parents, to find out if the same killer was responsible for her death, he'd been right about the cat and the chain of events leading to her abduction. He'd been the one who found the girl's body, replaced in her bed, her liver sewn back into her corpse.  
  
He was the one who knew, with absolutely certainty, that it had been an apology of sorts to put her back there. He'd explained that the killer justified what he did with a twisted system of honouring his victims to make them more than mere victims; that they weren't usually found because every part of them was consumed or used in some fashion. He was also the one who told them that the killer was a cannibal.  
  
These insights had made his first week at the FBI quite, if not pleasant, then tolerable. Certainly more tolerable than the daily treatments he had been undergoing before to keep him docile and force a blankness of being upon him. The people there still treated him like the prisoner he was, but they at least lent him a small measure of respect.  
  
54609 was already starting to feel less, well, empty. It was like the sensation of blood rushing back into a numbed limb; a shock to the system but a good one. His thoughts were less cloudy now. The food he was being given at the FBI was a lot more substantial than the small piles of low grade slop he'd been living on in the Home and it made him a lot more energetic. He felt able to talk back to the agents more and more, discovering that Katz had quite a dry sense of humour and Kramer could be quite pleasant if engaged on the right topics of conversation. He'd got to know a few of the science guys Katz worked with on the forensics side of their work as well and, though he couldn't claim to be friends with any of them, it still felt good. Like he had a place there.  
  
There had been one major setback, however. A few days in, one of the doctors from the facility appeared at the FBI and scared the living daylights out of him. He couldn't help but shrink back inside himself as he was taken aside, his brain tested with portable scanners, a few drugs administered, and a bunch of paperwork filled in. When the doctor left, Katz had taken him back to his room and sat with him for a little while, talking over the case again unnecessarily as he gradually stopped shaking and pulled himself together.  
  
That had been before the discovery of Elise Nichols' body and, in the excitement of that new break in the case, he had forgotten about it. That was, until he was escorted up to Crawford's office and told a doctor was there to see him. His heart completely dropped and he couldn't help but curl his arms around himself and hold on tightly.  
  
He didn't even look up as they entered the office and he was placed back into the chair on the other side of the next.  
  
"Your presence was requested by our consultant psychologist, Dr Lecter," Crawford said. He always sounded like someone making a point in the middle of an argument, even when making introductions. It was highly offputting. "You have Dr Lecter to thank for your being brought in on this case. He handpicked you for the job."  
  
An exasperated pause landed on the desk between them. Perhaps they were waiting for 54609 to say something but he was firmly staying silent.  
  
"Our guest has been very useful on the case," Crawford said, turning to the figure in the periphery of his vision in the seat beside him. "Though we've hit a wall."  
  
"I am glad my suggestion was of some use and I'm sure, given time, more results may be forthcoming. I'll admit, my interest as an academic is piqued by how successful this exchange has been already. Even without memory, it seems some skills remain and may be of great use, when put to relevant use."  
  
The man had an accent. Quite thick on some words, though nothing 54609 could place beyond the vague impression that he was European.  
  
"Not fond of eye contact are you?"  
  
54609 realised the man was talking to him and he closed his eyes. "No Sir," he mumbled.  
  
"I imagine it poses unique problems to a man such as yourself. You see so very much and yet have no context, for having no place in the world. There are no forts in the bone area of your skull."  
  
He frowned, speaking before he even had time to think about it. "Perception's a tool," he said, and risked a flicker of his eyes up to the man's face.  
  
Warm brown eyes, dark blonde hair swept to one side, dangerously curved lips and a strong jaw. His clothes were of quality but were casual, to the point of effort. Strange somehow. His body language was effortlessly regal, like a cat.  
  
The visiting doctor smiled at his words. "One that's pointed a both ends." He turned back to Crawford. "What he has is pure empathy. He can assume your point of view, or mine. It’s an uncomfortable gift, and yet also one of potential value. He is unique in this area of study for reasons we discussed previously."  
  
Though he was feigning disinterest, 54609 hung on his every word.  
  
"I must ask you to be careful in your treatment of him."  
  
"I'm not writing papers, doctor. I need results."  
  
54609 bristled at the way they talked about him as if he wasn't there. He glanced up at the visitor again and caught a glimpse of a slight snarl hidden behind the facade of the smile he was projecting at Crawford.  
  
"I have every faith," Lecter said. The sly and slightly offended tone went straight over the FBI man's head but it didn't pass 54609's notice. "I wondered if you might be willing to spare him, for a few hours or so, before he is returned to the state home. I would very much like the opportunity to study his response to the psychological stress of taking an active role in this case..."  
  
"Please," 54609 said, through gritted teeth, "don't psychoanalyse me." It came out a lot harsher and more demanding than he meant it to. Embarrassed and dismayed, he immediately ducked out of the room, taking the risk of punishment for leaving without being dismissed as a better alternative to staying.  
  
Katz was waiting outside, idly checking her phone, and he shuffled close to her, trying to make it look like he'd been properly released. Whether she believed that or not, she took pity on him and let him accompany her to the lab. Relief flooded through him like cold water and he sat there quietly for the rest of the day, observing the team stripping Elise Nichols' clothes for clues and discussing the possible meanings behind her being mounted on stag antlers, the way she had been.  
  
*  
  
The very next day, the case exploded. 54609 was put in a fresh jumpsuit and taken to Minnesota on a chartered flight with Crawford, Katz and Kramer and Brian Zeller and Jimmy Price from the lab.  
  
But the moment he set eyes on the naked figure of a girl mounted on a stag's head in the middle of a golden field, more of those damned ravens circling around her, 54609 knew that it wasn't the same killer.  
  
"Minneapolis homicide has already made a statement. They’re calling him the 'Minnesota Shrike'," Crawford told him as they stood by and watched the forensics team get to work.  
  
"That's a bird," Zeller interjected. "Shrike’s a perching bird. Impales mice and lizards on thorny branches and barbed wire. Rips their organs right out of their bodies. Puts them in a little birdie pantry and eats them later."  
  
"Fitting." Crawford turned to 54609 and studied his face. "What?" he snapped.  
  
"It's not... Whoever tucked Elise Nichols into bed didn’t paint this picture."  
  
Not hearing their conversation, Zeller continued with his investigation of the body. "He took her lungs," he yelled across to them. "I think she was still alive when he cut them out."  
  
The whole world was flashing in a mess of colour to 54609. He felt a surge of anger... no, not his anger, but the anger that the killer would have felt to see this blatantly incorrect and mocking version of his design. "The killer doesn't want to destroy women, he wants to consume them. This girl's killer thought she was a pig."  
  
That at least piqued Crawford's curiosity. "You think this is a copy cat?"  
  
"I don’t know," he rubbed his forehead, pieces of information flying around it like glass shards, drawing blood. "He has a house, or two, or a cabin. Something with an antler room. And... he has a daughter." That was it, the slither of light he'd been failing to grasp before. "Same age as the other girls. Same hair color, same eye color, same height, same weight. She’s an only child. She’s leaving home. He can’t stand the thought of losing her. She’s his Golden Ticket."  
  
By now everyone within earshot was listening to him.  
  
"And this copy cat?" Kramer asked.  
  
54609 shrugged. "An intelligent psychopath. A sadist. No traceable motive. No patterns. He may never kill like this again." He drew in on himself, exhausted by the fervour of his revelations.  
  
The team spread out and continued their investigations, but he could tell from the change in demeanour in Crawford that he believed him, even if it must have seemed unlikely to all of them.  
  
After all, they weren't living inside this killer's head, filling in the gaps with his thoughts.  
  
Eventually, he was taken to a holding cell in the local state police department, which had been mandated for his use during their stay. Katz and Kramer dropped him off and promised to retrieve him in the morning, which they duly did.  
  
A night on a hard bed in an empty cell left him feeling quite grumpy with thoughts of Dr Chilton and the Home. Already he had grown too used to the comforts of the FBI and the more purposeful existence it gave him. But he kept quiet and let the agents take him along for the ride as they were sent out on what they called 'house to house' interviews. It was going to be tedious, by all accounts.  
  
Except that it wasn't actually all that bad. They were visiting construction sites on a lead from the lab regarding some fragments of metal found in one of the wounds on Elise Nichols' body. It quickly turned out to be an interesting morning.  
  
Garret Jacob Hobbs was the name he focused in on when flicking through the work roster of the fourth construction company site they visited. A pipe fitter. "Does he have a daughter?" 54609 asked the impatient secretary, Dixie. "Eighteen or nineteen, wind-chaffed? Plain but pretty?"  
  
"What have you got?" Katz asked him, looking at the ledger but not seeing what he was seeing.  
  
"Everyone else left an address," he said, perfunctorily.  
  
To her credit, she didn't push him on it. Turning back to Dixie, she asked, "You got an address for Mr Hobbs?"  
  
The woman sighed, exasperated, and gestured to a pile of boxes. "In there somewhere, probably. We have a high turnover of pipers here you know. Economy's not so good."  
  
"Fine. Looks like we'll be taking these," Kramer said.  
  
Before she could protest, Katz and Kramer each grabbed a box. 54609 took the hint and picked up the last one and followed behind the group.  
  
He would look back with a strange detachment on what he did next, feeling almost like he was floating outside of his body and watching things unfold passively. He saw himself follow them outside, wait for Kramer to put one box in the boot before reaching up for the one he was holding out to him, and then saw himself tip the box, spilling the papers everywhere.  
  
He would recall a sudden cold fear, snapping at him like a whip, and a single thought rising to the surface of his mind. It was, quite simply, that _this can not be allowed to happen_. On autopilot, he picked up the phone in the office while the others were outside, gathering up the papers he'd dropped, and dialled the number on the ledger.  
  
A girl, the daughter he'd been imagining so clearly in his mind, handed him across to her father. "Mr Garret Jacob Hobbs?" he asked and waited for the confirmation. "You don’t know me and I hope we'll never meet, but... this is a courtesy call," he said. "Listen very carefully. Are you listening?"  
  
The man on the other line was holding his breath but definitely, definitely listening.  
  
"They know," he said, and put down the handset, just in time to avoid being caught red handed.  
  
He followed behind the agents and returned to his place in the back of the car, expression fixed completely blank, a solitary bead of persperation the only clue as to the turmoil he was in over what had just happened. He hoped that Mr Hobbs had taken his hint and made an escape.  
  
54609 didn't entirely understand why he wanted this man to be free, despite his crimes, except to have a vague sense that he couldn't go through the treatments and the therapies again. While he knew that it wouldn't be him, it would be Hobbs, that was how the thought presented itself in his mind and paralysed it. He had flown too close to the sun, identified too closely with this man.  
  
Perhaps the European doctor had been right. His perception really was a sharp knife with points and blades on both ends, and he was cutting his hands touching it.  
  
They had found the right file while he'd been inside the office, making that phone call. He was vaguely alarmed by how quickly they arrived at the address.  
  
The moment the car pulled up in the driveway of the house and the agents got out, the front door opened and a woman was thrown out. 54609 was shocked to see that her throat was cut, blood spurting out all down her front. The agents rushed to her side and were immediately calling for backup and medical assistance. Katz lingered a moment as Kramer kicked the front door down and made his way inside.  
  
His heart was pounding as he watched the scene unfolding. The weight of responsibility hit him hard; he had done this. It was his fault. Hobbs had known they were coming and he'd reacted in the way a killer would.  
  
The sound of a loud gunshot made him jump and he checked to see if his door was open. It wasn't, so he climbed into the front of the car and got out of the unlocked passenger door. 54609 ran to the house, shielding his eyes from the dead woman lying on the front of the porch, not quite knowing what he was doing except feeling like he had to do something.  
  
He followed his gut instincts through the hallway, towards the kitchen, and saw Kramer on the floor, not moving. Katz was aiming her weapon, but he couldn't see what she was looking at from the dark hall.  
  
"Drop it or I'll shoot!" she yelled.  
  
54609 came closer and saw a man, Hobbs, standing by the countertop, holding a knife to his daughter's throat. In a maddening moment of movement, he drew it across her neck, just as Katz opened fire and got in a hit to the shoulder. But it was already too late, the girl was on the floor, blood spewing garishly from her neck.  
  
Hobbs was definitely hit but adrenalin seemed to be on his side. He rushed Katz and a struggle ensued. For a long moment, 54609 held still, frozen with indecision and heavy with guilt.  
  
He watched Hobbs snap her wrist back to get hold of the gun, which he used to pistol whip her. Beverley sank to the floor, not unconsicous, but hurt enough to lose her bearings, and Hobbs aimed the gun downwards towards her head.  
  
That woke 54609 out of his reverie. He flew into the kitchen and knocked him aside, just in time, deflecting the bullet intended for her head into one of the cabinets behind her. He landed on the floor with Hobbs and somehow, just knew what to do.  
  
It was all a blur but he managed to knock the gun out of his hand and they rolled around in the pool of blood shed by his daughter. Somehow, 54609 had no idea how, he got Hobbs into a choke hold. A muscle memory he didn't even recognise had swept over him and he'd reacted like a trained agent.  
  
He felt Hobbs' struggles diminishing. But, suddenly, the cold fear swept over him once again. Hobbs was losing consciousness, and when he came to, he would be taken. He would be shaved, dehumanised and his head would be emptied of anything that he ever loved or cherished. He would be another number in the system.  
  
The sickening crunch of Hobbs' neck snapping in his hands seemed to reverberate around the entire kitchen and in the deepest chasms of his mind. He saw Katz blinking at him and turned his face away in shame.  
  
54609 found himself lying down next to the daughter, whose name he had never learned. Her eyes were vacant.  
  
"I'm sorry," he whispered, and kissed her forehead, like a father.  
  
Then there were sirens, and cops, and he was face down on the floor in handcuffs.  
  
*  
  
This time, he couldn't help the screams that rose to his throat, bursting out like veins. He couldn't hide his pain as the electrodes bit into his flesh, hot enough to burn, and his bloodstream was flooded with a horribly familiar cocktail of drugs.  
  
"Welcome home, 54609," Dr Chilton's voice had appeared to him through the haze of the sedatives they'd used to get him back there from Minnesota. "We have so missed you." The man had definitely leaned closer, hot breath on his cheek, as he whispered, "I knew you wouldn't last long out there. Oh well, back to square one."  
  
Tears of rage carved trails down his cheeks and he thrashed against the straps as much as he could. He pleaded with them, begging for them to wait, to let him explain, but it was no use. It never had been before and certainly wouldn't be now.  
  
And for some reason, the last image in his mind's eye in the last seconds before he blacked out, was the eerie smiling face of Dr Lecter.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, so very sorry, for my atrocious Italian. If anyone can improve it, please do so in the comments.

Hannibal proceeded directly to his Rolodex. He didn't stop to take off his coat. The tension growing beneath his skin was a dark and terrible coiling thing, moving almost unbearably. It needed release and it needed it soon.  
  
He gently flipped through the business cards, trying to focus, to find the inspiration amidst the anger. The Rolodex was vastly slimmed down compared to how it once had been. Hannibal paused and smiled, grimly, at the memory of the night Will had made him recount the offence of every single business card owner and ripped up any he deemed unjust. Only the truly deserving were left. People whose crimes went beyond a displeasing encounter with Hannibal in scope; the animal harming, women beating, willfully cruel liars and cheaters of the world.  
  
Even without Will there, he had continued the code of conduct they'd agreed. Still pretending Will was there with him, just out of sight, in the shadows.  
  
There. A business card Will had not merely permitted, but added himself. A man who hid in plain sight, as both arthouse auctioneer and a sex trafficker who imported young women from Eastern Europe on the same routes as his imported artworks, and sold them like those dead canvasses. He had made a fortune from their misery down in New Orleans before he'd moved to Virginia and crossed their paths, for the second time in Will's case. A man overlooked by the penal system entirely; an offender to both of their sensibilities. Perfect.  
  
He lingered only long enough to check that the sitter had tended to the needs of his dogs and that they were all properly settled in the custom built shed at the end of his garden. Once reassured that they had enough food and water, he left in a hurry.  
  
It would be a long drive down to Virginia Beach but it would be cathartic. Hannibal was a man nearing the end of a very, very long journey. A few extra miles would make no difference.  
  
Nearly two years had passed since that fateful day. With the rain pounding down on the hood of his car, it was hard not to relive it in the spaces between the window wipers. Anything to erase the overwhelming rage that a tattooed number on the side of a particularly precious skull had inspired in him.  
  
It had rained then too, and the streets of Florence had smelled of wild fennel, porphyry and the dirt that clung to the rocks in the quarries of Carrara and lingered still in the city. Not that the average cittadino di Firenze knew it. Hannibal knew places at a deep cell level, every scent housing bubbles of information and memories. He recalled the scent of crostini di fegato, a sample taken from a silver tray as they passed through the morning market for the last time, unknowingly, and which lingered on Will's fingers, invoking the memory when he kissed the palm of his hand later that day.  
  
He hadn't been able to stand the thought of liver paté, or to include the earthy zest of saffron in his cooking since. The memory was beyond the high walls of his capacity for pain management; a lingering demon in the corners of his mental palace.  
  
It had been an unexpectedly happy time, living in the shadow of the Palazzo della Signoria, waking to the scent of freshly baked bread from the nearby panificio every morning. Though Will didn't share his appreciation for fineries and high society - working on lake boats as a youngster had left him with an ingrained indifference towards the pastimes of the wealthy - Hannibal was content.  
  
The circumstances of their departure had been less than ideal, under a cloud of suspicion that threatened to cling. Though Hannibal had fortunately not come under the FBI's radar - they had kept their relationship extremely private and their lives entirely separate - Will had been under surveillance. An unfortunate side effect of the new targeting policy which he had demanded was that several of the Chesapeake Ripper's victims were vaguely traceable to his days in NOPD narcotics.  
  
Hannibal had always planned ahead for the day it became necessary to leave. All games, even the best of them, had to come to a close eventually. In the ten years since their initial acquaintance, he'd also prepared on Will's behalf as well. Hannibal was nothing if not fastidious in his forward thinking.  
  
It was unfortunate that he had not anticipated an outside party, with links to a certain crime lord they had put down in a very public tableau, activating links with mafia in Italy in order to go after Will. Hannibal hadn't ever discovered how they had known he had gone to Italy, though he suspected that the spectre of their newest pseudonym, Il Mostro, had been a clue. But it hardly mattered in the end.  
  
No one had been to blame but himself. He'd been drunk, on life, on hitherto unknown pangs of sensation in his chest, on Will's scent and the essential ingredient of bliss it contained. The rain had started suddenly while they drank caffè al vetro outside a tea shop in the square. The natural inclination to shelter had been waived by Will, who was in one of his less melancholic, more romantic moods. Hannibal had been too blinded by the vision of his lover, drenched and boneless, and too wholly focused on the hand which had gently slipped into his for the first time out in public, to notice the calculating eyes that were on them. Everything inside him had been heat, knowing that the look that passed over Will's face as he walked ahead, leading him, glancing back with a half smile, meant only one thing.  
  
He hadn't seen, though he should have, the knife that slid into his ribs with disturbing ease. They had just turned into the narrow alley they had to traverse to reach the small door in the wall further down that lead into their private sanctuary. Will's expression of shock, and the moment their hands were pulled apart, still replayed in his dreams sometimes.  
  
Mafia men had appeared both before them and behind them. Despite a vague swing at his attacker, the wound was deep and he hadn't been able to avoid being kicked down into a puddle. He was dragged off to a nearby van that, again, he should have noticed was there, and bundled inside. Only a stroke of good fortune, with only one man remaining to try and tie him up, had given Hannibal the advantage and he had managed to snap the man's neck and free himself of the half applied bonds.  
  
The van doors were closed and locked from the outside, so he couldn't push his way back out. Hannibal looked through the square window in the door and saw that the mafia men that had been trying to get hold of Will were dead by his hand. For a brief moment, his heart swelled at the sight. But then a polizia car was blaring its siren at the end of the street and the danger had doubled.  
  
Though the torrential rain had prevented much blood from getting on him, there was no mistaking the knife in Will's hand and his position over the bodies. The two polizia stormed out of the car and were yelling at him to, "Fermo, mani in alto! Metti giù il coltello!"  
  
Will was roughly shoved down to his knees, a gun aimed at his head as handcuffs were applied. He was thrown into the back of the police car, as another arrived on the other end of the street, along with an ambulance. Someone somewhere had seen what was going on and called them in.  
  
Hannibal knew that he had no choice but get out of the area, fast. Undoubtedly it would be reported that Will hadn't been alone when they attacked. So he couldn't go to a hospital.  
  
He climbed through into the front of the van, very aware of his blood loss and the incriminating dead body in the back, and the fact that the van would have to be ditched very quickly to avoid his being followed. Hannibal had little choice but to head for the remote outhouse they out in the countryside, where the tools of their trade were stored. There was a makeshift surgical bed there so he knew he would be able to assess the damage and hopefully repair it.  
  
The van and the body, he sent into a nearby lake. From there he'd just about made it to the outhouse in time to save his own life, though the repair had been an ugly one because he'd been so woozy from blood loss. Hannibal had then spent several days falling in and out of consciousness, fighting off an infection.  
  
By the time he'd broke through it, Will had been identified and was facing extradition back to America. The polizia hadn't given the media any indication that he hadn't been alone, even though Hannibal knew that they would have noted that he had traveled to Italy with a companion, and had to be searching for him too. He supposed it was enough for the Italian authorities to have the kudos of allowing the FBI to finally close their case file on the notorious Chesapeake Ripper. There was no need to throw up questions with the possibility that he had not been acting alone. It was far neater and simpler for them.  
  
For the first few weeks, Hannibal buried his loss in practicalities. He had no means to prevent Will from being taken back to the US to face trial, so he would have to get back there and try to find a way to prevent a conviction. His false identity was no longer a safe one as it was tied with Will's, leaving him stranded.  
  
After spending a great deal of money replacing it, Hannibal rented out a flat on the edge of the city. Much as he wished to, he couldn't leave just yet, there were things he needed to tend to.  
  
The five stray dogs that Will had adopted across the span of their two years in Florence had been taken by the police and, though he had never been their primary caregiver, he felt a sense of duty in attempting to reclaim them. Will was going to want them back.  
  
Once located, it took time to retrieve them from the kennels. Then he had to make the preparations required to have them sent to the United States. Fortunately, quarantine regulations would keep them kenelled for three to six months, allowing him the time he needed to retrieve the final and most important item from their home.  
  
It was a risk, he knew, to return to the house he and Will had been sharing. The polizia had ransacked the place, of course, but not everything was gone. He couldn't leave Florence without one very important item and was relieved to find it still in place.  
  
He left under cover of darkness, the black resin figure of a black stag tucked under his arm inside his coat.  
  
It had been raining then too.  
  
At the time, he'd thought it wouldn't be long before he was reunited with Will. It had all felt like a temporary setback, because the fact of the matter was that Will wasn't the real Chesapeake Ripper. He'd had a hand in a few of his later efforts, certainly, but it should have been a simple matter to prove that Will simply couldn't have perpetrated many of the earlier works that were now attributed to the Ripper. He had been in other places.  
  
He came to regret that no one had ever understood his work in the way that Will had, when his artfully done confessional murders during the trial had been blamed on a copycat.  
  
The powers that be were keen to send Will down. A white, mid-thirties ex cop turned professor of behavioral psychology, whose expert profiles had caught several murderers in the past, was an obvious choice. The families of the victims wanted justice and so that was the verdict.  
  
Except that there was no justice. To have one's identity stolen away, that was barbaric. Will had always thought so, and his fear of this very scenario had been palpable throughout their time together.  
  
Once sentenced, Will disappeared into the system and became an untraceable number. His location was not a matter of accessible record. All Hannibal could do was extrapolate and investigate and search every facility he could find where someone convicted of Will's crimes might be placed.  
  
It had been a relatively simple matter to return to the psychiatric field. A scattered profession, no one particularly questioned his absence. He merely announced his intention to pursue an extensively researched academic paper on the reformation of the criminal element and their usage in society.  
  
Two years.  
  
He'd started in Louisiana. It was, after all, where Will was born, so it was not unreasonable to assume that that might have some bearing on his placement. It was simple enough to reopen his old practice in New Orleans and use it as a base.  
  
Dinner parties were the key to the high walled gates of the institutions he sought entry into. The sort of psychiatrists who had risen to the top of the profession and nested in the highly paid profession of jailer to the nation's conscience were the sort of people who responded to invitations of fine dining with respected peers in their field. They simply adored the chance to preen.  
  
It was no less than a joke that he was still so well known for his dinner parties amongst his fellow psychiatrist professionals, even after his extensive absence. Will had been the first person who ever correctly deduced that he actually loathed the dinner party itself; that what he actually loved was the spectacle of high society buffoons feasting on the flesh of their own. Will had seen through his game so easily. It was a righteous theatre, and everyone was unwittingly playing their parts and saying their predictable old lines.  
  
There were ten institutions in the state and he made an effort to get to know the gatekeepers of each of them, feeding them up like sows and gaining their trust like dogs. One by one, he gained access to their confidential records for his 'research' and searched them for the face that had ruined him for all others.  
  
Louisiana held no answers. After nine months, he decided to go north and search the States nestled around Chesapeake Bay. It was possible Will had been made to answer for his supposed crimes by interested or connected parties from the area they had made their hunting ground.  
  
Hannibal took up a teaching post in the psychology department at West Virginia University and used that as a base to continue the project. He put his modest recompense to use renting a townhouse and employed a student to look after the dogs during his frequent absences. There were eight institutions to infiltrate in West Virginia and a further twelve in Virginia.  
  
He spent a year there and found little enjoyment to be had. The task was a grueling one; far more so than he had anticipated. He focused as best he could and spent most of his evenings idly drinking cognac by the fireside, wandering through the halls of his mental palace that smelled of arousal, fire and Old Spice. Will was captured in stillness there, a statue he couldn't wake. He was cold and his eyes were lost, and he seemed to grow dimmer every time he went there. It kept him going just as much as it depressed him.  
  
Will would not be lost to him, he wouldn't allow it. Abandonment was not an option.  
  
Hannibal went north again into Maryland. He returned to Baltimore, to his old practice there. There were thankfully only six institutions to be concerned with, though they were going to be potentially harder to infiltrate, due to more stringent codes of practice with regards to security in that particular state.  
  
Once again, he got to work, getting to know the glorified wardens at each of the institutions he needed entry into. But the dirt sweat taste of desperation was starting to form on his upper lip and Hannibal found himself hunting by night more and more to release his pent up frustrations. He kept within the agreed code as much as possible and tried not to draw too much attention, but he knew he was losing control more than he ever had before.  
  
When the FBI came knocking on his door, he had to face the very real possibility that he had lost. He asked the agent who introduced himself as Jack Crawford to wait in his waiting area while he took a moment inside, breathing in and focusing, and checking that he knew where his scalpel was, just in case. He then invited him in, in a flourish.  
  
If Hannibal had known that this man was his salvation, he would have welcomed him more warmly.  
  
"One of our part time consultants from Georgetown University recommend you to me," Crawford told him, while admiring one of his drawings; a pencil drawing of his boarding school in France.  
  
"Oh? I don't believe I know anyone..."  
  
"Dr Alana Bloom."  
  
The name rang a bell. She had been at West Virginia on a research sabbatical for a few months and had been interested in his work. Their acquaintance had been brief but, apparently, useful. "Most psychology departments are filled with personality deficients. Dr. Bloom would be the exception," he said, very aware of his own generosity of expression in this instance.  
  
"Yes, she showed me, uh, your paper. 'Evolutionary' uh, 'Evolutionary Origins of Social Exclusion'?" Crawford said. "Very interesting. Very interesting. Even for a layman."  
  
Hannibal couldn't quite work out if he was going for levity, modesty or was truly not very intelligent. "A layman? So many learned fellows going about in the halls of Behavioral Science at the FBI, and you consider yourself a layman?"  
  
"By comparison." Crawford's expression changed as he turned to Hannibal and rose to his full height, getting towards the real purpose for his visit. "Dr Bloom was telling me about your latest research on the criminal rehabilitation through amnesia programs, and your theory that useful abilities clearly retained by the subjects involved could be very effective if better targeted. She told me the subject range of your research has been a great deal more extensive than anything that's come before it. I wanted to know what conclusions you've reached."  
  
"My paper is not yet..."  
  
"Oh yes I realise that, but I want to know if you think that using certain kinds of criminals in the rehabilitation programme could help us solve cases more effectively."  
  
Hannibal narrowed his eyes. "Specifically?"  
  
"Murder cases. I'm talking about serial killers. This is not an something the FBI has considered as yet. Traditionally, the general rehabilitated murderers are used by law enforcement but serial killers, they're left to rot. This would be a big risk to our department but I want to know if it could help."  
  
A tiny ray of light slithered into the room and hit the corner of Hannibal's eye, creating a flash. Things dropped into place in an instant and he felt a pang of hope, more terrible than any stab of anger he'd recently experienced.  
  
"The early findings of my research are that those with a predisposition towards serial murder might actually be of the greatest use, even though now they are rarely more than maintained in the rehabilitative system. Their pathology is of a particular kind. It is a great deal more instilled, yet they can be made just as docile and useful as your average criminal. I believe you would see some impressive breakthroughs if you were to try this out." Hannibal paused, choosing his words very carefully. "Might I ask, does this relate to a particular case?"  
  
"There are several going on right now, but yes - we have a serial killer taking girls in Minnesota and, frankly, I'm ready to start thinking outside of the box on this one."  
  
Hannibal had to squeeze his fist closed to stop himself from smiling. "I am already in the process of securing the option of cataloguing inmates in the Maryland area. If you could, perhaps, be of assistance in securing my entry, I would be more than happy to assess them and find the right one for this trial."  
  
Crawford nodded and grimly considered his words. "Yes. That might be useful. We could also do with a consultant with your background, if you're interested?"  
  
At that, the smile simply wouldn't be held back. "Certainly. I would be only too happy to help."  
  
Within the week, he was shaking hands with Dr Frederick Chilton, a man who embodied the absolute worst of their particular profession, in the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element. Though outwardly prestigious, Hannibal had found the interior particularly repressive, the treatment of prisoners particularly odious, and he had almost hoped that this was not where Will had ended up.  
  
Except that, right there, in the files, there he was. A blank expression to the camera, a photo clipped to a confidential file. Had he not been concerned that he was being filmed, he might have torn the entire thing up in a fit of spitting rage. Instead he calmly pretended to read through the rest of the files in front of him, looking straight through them, before asking to see inmate 54609.  
  
As the prisoner was undergoing his daily treatments, he was invited to watch on the security camera in Chilton's office. On the screen there, he saw a pitiful figure in a blue jumpsuit, strapped to a near-vertical bench, shuddering involuntarily as the electricity was blasted through the pads on his bald head, his voice repeatedly catching in his throat with the effort of not making a sound. It was stunning to him to consider that this was his Will. He was barely recognisable.  
  
Hannibal was grateful that there was no necessity to shake Dr Chilton's hand on the way out, as he'd squeezed the fountain pen in his pocket so hard he'd torn a hole in his hand. The inside of his pocket was a mess of ink and blood.  
  
The rain was just starting, a rumble of clouds sounding overhead, when he left the building. Hannibal stood for a moment under the shower, eyes closed, head tilted back, the rain washing away the crystals of salt forming in his eyes and the stains on his hand. It had been exactly fitting for the moment of overwhelming catharsis that came with finally finding him, after nearly two years of searching.  
  
Gerald Plaid, the arthouse auctioneer who was destined to bear the brunt of his anger was sitting out on the balcony of his home in Virginia Beach. Hannibal watched him from his car for nearly an hour, waiting for him to go inside, assessing his property and planning how best to get in and out unseen.  
  
The image on that screen was burned on his retinas. He had to exorcise it with blood and art.  
  
The next morning, cops would discover the corpse of Gerald Plaid strapped to an upturned table in his kitchen, surrounded by water tinged with blood. One cop would be electrocuted when stepping into the water without noticing the exposed wires placed there as a booby trap. Once the electricity was shut off, they would find two severed arms, cut from the man whilst alive, a torso viciously slashed up to such a degree that his organs were practically mush, and the top of his head removed with the brain removed, chopped up and then left on a frying pan nearby. They would find it well cooked, with a seasoning of garlic, cumin and lime.  
  
They would also later discover the heart missing, never to be found.  
  
*  
  
"Not fond of eye contact, are you?"  
  
"No Sir."  
  
Hannibal was schooling his expression into that of general polite interest but inside he was a tempest of burning hellfire. He had deliberated for several days over the wisdom of actually meeting Will. In the end, he had inevitably been unable to resist.  
  
But this quiet, sullen, frightened thing wasn't Will. He bore a resemblance to how he had been in the early days of their acquaintance, when Will Graham had been a man tormented by the fear of his own nature and empathetic abilities. But Hannibal had broken him free of all of that many years before and it was difficult to accept that all of his work had been undone, and worse, regressed further.  
  
It was maddening to see him avoiding his gaze like the Will of old, distressing to feel no sense of challenge or defiance under the surface. "I imagine it poses unique problems to a man such as yourself," he said, drinking his coffee in an effort to appear entirely relaxed, when he was anything but. "You see so very much and yet have no context, for having no place in the world. There are no forts in the bone area of your skull."  
  
"Perception's a tool." There. There was a flicker of Will in the frown and the flash of intelligence.  
  
Hannibal couldn't help but smile a little, mostly with relief. "One that's pointed a both ends," he said and could feel an unconscious shiver of irritation at the analysis coming from the frail young man seated beside him. Hannibal explained Will's gifts to Crawford more fully in an effort to take that spark of feeling and get it to grow, like striking a match. "What he has is pure empathy. He can assume your point of view, or mine. It’s an uncomfortable gift, and yet also one of potential value. He is unique in this area of study for reasons we discussed previously."  
  
Will was hearing him, no matter how passive his body language appeared to be. Not 54609, but Will himself.  
  
"I must ask you to be careful in your treatment of him," he added to Crawford to provoke further reaction.  
  
"I'm not writing papers, doctor. I need results."  
  
That irritated Hannibal somewhat. Jack Crawford was useful but so very rude. In times past, he would have been a prime candidate for the Rolodex. "I have every faith," he said, dryly. He pushed his annoyance to one side to focus on more important matters; the reason he had decided to become more acquainted with the investigation and the unit itself. "I wondered if you might be willing to spare him, for a few hours or so, before he is returned to the state home. I would very much like the opportunity to study his response to the psychological stress of taking an active role in this case..."  
  
"Please," Will said, through gritted teeth, "don't psychoanalyse me."  
  
Hannibal felt his heart soar and his ability to breathe halt. The familiar phrase brought memories to his mind like tears to his eyes. It had been a private joke between them once upon. That was the proof, if he ever needed it, that Will Graham was still there, buried under the sand of what had been done to him.  
  
That man who had licked the blood from his fingers and carved his initials into Hannibal's thigh, he was going to bring him back no matter the cost.  
  
The fact was, it didn't matter what torments they had subjected his Will to, what conditioning they had tried to impose. The beautiful monster inside him was there, still breathing, still glistening with blood, waking to the siren call of its maker.  
  
It was time to start the plan.  
  
*  
  
If Hannibal believed in predestiny, he would have believed it embodied in the coincidence of the killer's methodology involving stag antlers. It was perfect.  
  
He silently apologised to Will for stretching the code a little in his choice of victim, but it had to look authentic to the laymen. The young girl who saw the glint of his blade that night was discovered chain smoking outside a shop. She blew smoke in his face while grunting profanities to a relative down her phone and Hannibal concluded that she would be no great loss to the world.  
  
If anything, he would be elevating her purpose in using her body to assist Will in his role as FBI liaison. Jack Crawford had wanted more results and fast and Hannibal was nothing if not a helpful friend to the FBI. She would be a negative to the positive aspects of the killer they were seeking; the tableau distinctive enough for Will to decipher, if no one else.  
  
He took those lungs which had breathed the smoke which offended him while she still wriggled and cried, and when she was silent, he mounted her on a large stag's head procured from a farm about a mile down the road from the scene of his artistry.  
  
Hannibal was gone before dawn and home in time to feed the dogs their breakfast treats. They particularly enjoyed the chewy offcuts of primary bronchi.  
  
He didn't predict, although he possibly should have, just how quickly Will would solve the case following his intervention. He called Jack Crawford a day or so later and was dismayed to bear the brunt of the agent's fierce anger at the death of one of his underlings and the injury of another. Not to mention that his experimental use of a reformed serial killer had ended in said serial killer murdering the one they were catching, which had not been the desired outcome at all. Crawford sounded like a man on the edge.  
  
When Hannibal inquired after 54609, Hannibal had been more than dismayed to hear that he was being returned to the care of Dr Chilton until his trial. He expressed concern that the treatments awaiting him there would damage his ability to provide an accurate chain of events leading to the near-capture of the killer the media had now dubbed the Minnesota Shrike (ironically, after his intervention in the case).  
  
He argued vehemently, using every method of persuasion he at his disposal, that all would be lost if the thought processes that had lead 54609 to the door of Garret Jacob Hobbs could not be studied. He made it clear that the entire experiment would be jeopardised. "The FBI will have serious questions to answer, and no means to do so without an accurate account from this man," he said and knew that his words were hitting home, like a stone dropped into a well.  
  
In the end, he had given Crawford no choice but to permit him to intervene, as a consulting psychiatrist with the full authority of the FBI behind him.  
  
He went directly to the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element and vehemently, even rudely, demanded to be taken to the rehabilitation chambers by Chilton's receptionist. He had managed to intervene just as the electrodes were being switched on. Hannibal silenced Dr Chilton's protests with an exaggerated account of the power vested him by the FBI and the quickly stated promise of a full explanation over a sumptuous dinner, and the machines were switched off.  
  
Hannibal searched Will's face for a flicker of recognition as he briefly came around, limbs slowly relaxing. The blue of his eyes were obliterated by the dilated black, and he saw them only for a few seconds before Will passed out, probably due to the drugs. But that brief glimmer was enough to calm him, at least for now.  
  
Though he was outwardly smiling, the picture of charm itself, inside he was contemplating the spectre of Dr Chilton at his table, or rather on his table, his rotten insides put out on display, the man gargling in his own blood and poison.  
  
But not yet. Not without Will there to hold the blade beside him.  
  
He kept that picture in mind and forced his face into a passive mask on seeing Will being wheeled away, back down to whatever dark corner he was typically kept in.  
  
Everything now would be a matter of time and calculation. He knew now with more certainty than ever before that Will would be returned to him in time. All he had to do was be patient and continue the course now set out before him.

Really, it all came down to one final variable: the trial.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, how did Will Graham become Hannibal Lecter's partner in crime and more? 
> 
> Let me tell you a little story about a surgeon and a cop...


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes this one just got longer and longer. And I only got about halfway through all the stuff and events I wanted to get through. I think there is going to have to be another prequel chapter later on because there are a lot more gaps I want to fill in...!
> 
> Anyway, I hope this is a good start for explaining how differently Will's life went after meeting Hannibal Lecter (and Molly Foster) at a much earlier point in his life, and how it led him down a darker path.
> 
> PS - This relationship is very much a slow burn one, so no sex just yet. This part is all about them finding each other and coming to terms with falling in love so unexpectedly. We'll get there eventually, when it makes sense.

 

**TEN YEARS AGO**

  
The first thing that hit him was the scent of bleach and chemicals. He cracked his eyes open a little and squinted against the bright fluorescent beams that burned his retinas.  
  
"Isn't there something you can do? It's not right," a woman's voice said. He recognised it but couldn't quite focus enough to find a name.  
  
"It's not really my decision, Mol."  
  
Molly. Of course, it was Molly. And he was in a hospital bed. He'd been stabbed. Yes. That was it.  
  
"There's a crowding issue in this place. Plus, it's easier to guard both of them at once. You know, in case Delfonso has any friends who'd think it worth their time to visit him... or Graham."  
  
That was Charles Chipongu from homicide. Will tried to crane his neck aside a little but he felt too weak to do much. A run of gastro-nasal tubing was also taped down quite aggressively against his neck, making movement inadvisable. He got no more than a slight blurry outline of them, Chipongu in uniform by the door, Molly's pregnancy bump looking swollen and magnified somehow from his angle.  
  
She sighed. "Charles..."  
  
"Excuse me," a voice he didn't recognise interjected, "I apologise for the intrusion, but I was hoping to check these patients over before I depart for the evening."  
  
"Oh ah, sorry Doctor," Molly said. "I'm just going, but um... will he be okay? Will Graham I mean?"  
  
"He lost a great deal of blood. The recovery process will be a slow one." Accented, strange. Will couldn't place it. "But I believe he will be well in time. I rather expect that both of them will pull through."  
  
That made Molly snort and begin a diatribe about the outrage of forcing Graham to share a room with the man who had nearly killed him, overcrowding or no, even though it was patently clear that this Doctor didn't have a great deal to say about it.  
  
Will turned his head to aside in the opposite direction, losing interest, and this time he couldn't help but focus his eyes. A flare of anger hit him at the sight of Jon Delfonso in the next bed, right there, sharing his room. That was quickly followed by an incredible and overwhelming pain in his chest.  
  
That bastard had killed Arnie Oliver. He'd jumped in out of nowhere, stabbed Will in the leg and taken his gun in the moment of surprise. The lowlife drug dealer had used that to shoot his partner twice in the chest and then he'd laughed as he executed Oliver with a shot to the head at policy blank range. Only the arrival of Barry and Anushka, running in as backup, had saved Will from the same fate.  
  
They had shot Delfonso several times and Will had heard the thud he made as he hit the floor. He had felt pleased by the sound in the moments before he passed out, feeling like some small justice had been served. Arnie Oliver had been an honourable officer and had three daughters, all in their early teens. The image of the family photo Oliver had kept on his desk appeared before Will's eyes with a sense of deep grief, only tempered by the knowledge that Delfonso was dead, as he blacked out.  
  
It was therefore an extremely unwelcome surprise to discover that the man was not only alive, but right there next to him. He groaned and coughed against the tube down his throat, the heart monitor next to him spiking with a tinny warning beep. He was too weak to move much but his eyes were fire, his nostrils flaring. In that moment of half awakening, Will wanted nothing less than blood on the sheets and the gurgle of a death rattle, however he could get it.  
  
Before he had time to be shocked at the vehemence of his feelings, gentle hands were pressing him down. He saw warm brown eyes and dirty blonde hair amidst the haze of his sleep-filled eyes. The eyes in particular were oddly familiar, though he didn't know why.  
  
The tube down his throat was gently pulled out and the tape pulled off his neck, leaving him coughing weakly, but he was held down securely so it didn't hurt as much as it might have.  
  
Molly was pawing at him, calling his name. Will was overwhelmed immediately, not knowing where to look, hating the feeling of being trapped there, unable to get away. So he looked back towards Delfonso; a point at which he could focus his rage and grief and let it become him.  
  
"Miss...?" the blonde man, prompted, not unkindly.  
  
"Uh, Molly. Molly Foster. Mrs."  
  
"I would be exceedingly grateful if you could wait outside for ten minutes or so, Mrs Foster. "I know you will wish to speak to my patient now that he is awake, but I must check him over first. Given the slightly sensitive location of the injury, some privacy would be appropriate."  
  
She looked like she would protest, but quickly cowed under the strength of the Doctor's gaze. "I'll be back, Will. Just hang in there," she said, in a manner so grandiose Will momentarily wondered if he was dying.  
  
The Doctor instructed Charles to step outside as well, though to remain within close reach of course.  
  
"Good evening, Mr Graham," the Doctor said.  
  
Only then did Will suddenly realise why he looked familiar. There had been a moment, very fleeting, when he could recall looking up and seeing faces in surgical masks. Before an oxygen mask was lowered down onto his face to knock him out, those eyes had been above him, watching him.  
  
"I remember you," Will grunted with a raspy sore throat, and earned a near imperceptible smile in response. "You're a surgeon?"  
  
"I am. My name is Dr Lecter." The Doctor peeled the bedsheet away from Will and hitched his gown up a little.  
  
The stab wound was quite high up, ranging towards his inner thigh. Only when Lecter parted his legs a little and turned the injured one to get access did Will realise just how embarrassing the location of it was. He turned his head and looked away as those gentle fingers probed the bruises seeping around the bandages.  
  
"I didn't think surgeons made patient visits."  
  
"Yours was a difficult surgery. I was not entirely happy with the outcome."  
  
A spike of fear went down Will's spine and he cleared his throat. "Um... it's not... will I be able to walk?"  
  
Lecter blinked at that, as if it hadn't been in question. "Most certainly. I only mean that, the angle of the injury created some difficulty and the bruising you sustained is not to my usual standards. We almost couldn't keep up with the rate of blood loss. This is going to be painful for a little while."  
  
Will winced as the gauze covering his incision was removed. "I can live with that. Just uh... get this over with." He tried to see as much as he could, though the angle made it difficult.  
  
"I'd like to check your pain management levels. Does this hurt?" Lecter asked, pressing along the sutres with his fingers, lightly.  
  
There wasn't a lot of feeling there, thanks to mother morphine, so Will shook his head. He risked a quick glance up at Lecter's eyes but regretted it the moment it was noticed, looking aside again, uncomfortably. Will had never been a fan of Doctors at the best of times. This wasn't even close to that.  
  
"Not fond of eye contact are you?" Lecter said, with a spark of amusement.  
  
"Eyes are distracting. You see too much. You don’t see enough," he said, his gaze falling again on the unconscious figure of Delfonso, now lucid enough to assess the man's injuries a little more. He tried not to let his gaze linger too long though. "And it’s hard to focus when you’re thinking those whites are really white or they must have hepatitis, or is that a burst vein?" he continued. "So I try to avoid eyes whenever possible." It was a bullshit excuse to hide the fact that he just didn't like people, didn't connect with them, and the feeling had been so often mutual it had always been simpler just to avoid that sort of thing altogether.  
  
The explanation was taken with a sly half-smile, to Will's relief, and a welcome silence was maintained while Will's dressings were replaced, expertly.  
  
"Tell me Will. What would you do with Mr Delfonso right now, if the decision were yours to make?" Lecter asked, surprising Will with the sudden use of his first name and the unexpected change in topic. Obviously his earlier ire had been noticed.  
  
Will frowned, deeply. "What do you mean?"  
  
"I understand from news reports that he shot your partner dead, using your gun. So tell me, do you wish he were dead?"  
  
The question stunned Will. Or at least, the tone of his voice did. There was something uncoiling in it, like a snake unfurling from a tree branch, looking down at new prey. The Doctor had fixed him with a penetrating stare that slid right under his skin. He felt immediately disarmed and was about to snap back at him in indignant defence, when Molly was back in the room.  
  
Whatever strange thing he'd glimpsed in Dr Lecter's manner of questionning immediately went back inside its shell, leaving a man who was the picture of charm. He indulged Molly's questions on Will's heath with a patience that didn't seem forced, even though Will suspected it wasn't as sincere as it appeared, and then made an easy retreat.  
  
He'd hadn't been able to stay awake for long. Just long enough to thank Molly for visiting, and for bringing the card that sat on his nightstand, filled with impersonal messages from NOPD colleagues, including some he didn't even know, who'd merely been caught up in the story. Not that he particularly cared either way. If there were to be cards, they should be for Oliver's widow and his kids.  
  
Will fell asleep staring at the man in the bed next to his, Dr Lecter's words echoing in his mind, that thickly spoken foreign accent replicated perfectly. "Do you wish he were dead?"  
  
*  
  
The last thing he expected when he woke up in the middle of the night, his leg pained, his tongue dry, was the sight of Dr Lecter sitting beside him in the dim light, idly flipping a coin.  
  
"The mathematics of human behavior," he was saying, quietly, all the world around them seeming distant and dreamy. "All those ugly variables." He palmed the coin and looked at Will in a way that transfixed him in return. "Forgive me Will, I didn't mean to wake you."  
  
Will stared at him for a long moment, too confused to respond. "What did you mean?" he asked, in the end.  
  
"I am curious by nature. I find you interesting."  
  
That seemed so outlandish, Will almost laughed.  
  
"What you do, I mean," Lecter clarified. "You found Mr Delfonso though a leap in methodology that no one has been able to explain, yet your colleagues have stated to the media that it is not the first time. They have said that you have a 'knack for the monsters'. You have the ability to place yourself into the minds of the mad, the dangerous, to decode their means and methods and catch them."  
  
Once again Will felt intensely irritated. He hated the thought that people talked behind his back because of his ability. It wasn't something he asked for, it was simply his nature. Or, at least, his own private well of madness.  
  
"Why would that make you curious? Isn't it pretty straightforward?"  
  
Lecter cocked his head and the sparse light from the corridor caught the angles on it. For the first time, Will realised that the man had a handsome shapeliness to his features. Unusual and distinguished. Though he couldn't be older than mid thirties, he carried himself like an old philosopher, with an added air of something that could only be described as otherworldly.  
  
"What do you feel when you wear the skin of devils?" When no response was given, he continued his reverie. "I imagine what you see and learn touches everything else in your mind. Your values and decency are present yet shocked at your associations, appalled at your dreams."  
  
"Are you a Doctor or a psychiatrist?" Will snapped.  
  
His tone of voice didn't seem to affect Lecter in the slightest. He merely smiled that tiny, near-imperceptible smile that lived only at the corner of his lips, his eyes shining like they were cat's eyes. He looked strangely pleased with himself as he idly flipped the coin in his hand a few more times.  
  
Will watched with the dawning sense of being inside a pocket of darkness, sewn together and thrown around them like a blanket by Dr Lecter. It was all so surreal. "Why does this interest you?"  
  
The coin was caught and palmed again. "I saw a certain something in your gaze as you looked to Mr Delfonso that was interesting. As a surgeon, I hold life and death in my hands every day. It's a reduced, simple thing. I wonder what it is to someone like you. Someone whose morals are smothered with the dreams and desires of the darkest parts of the human psyche." Lecter smiled again, chillingly. "If I were to give you the option of heads or tails, one he lives, the another, I put an end to his life right here, right now, would you take it?"  
  
"I... I don't know."  
  
Lecter held his hand out, fisted around the coin, watching Will intently. "This man murdered your partner in cold blood. He almost killed you. He had brought misery and helplessness to the lives many people, and you know as well as I that a conviction is not guaranteed, given your entry onto his property without a warrant. You cannot claim you do not despise him."  
  
Will gulped, knowing that defence of reasonable cause was an unpredictable one at best, and might indeed affect the conviction yet. But he was a cop, he couldn't just go around the law. "Why are you doing this?"  
  
"Then you want him to live? Very well, heads or tails, for his life?"  
  
"I... no I..."  
  
"Is this not as reasonable a means to gain justice as any other?" Lecter pressed. "Heads or tails?"  
  
"You can't just kill a man. I mean... there are machines attached to him. I'm a witness... you'd get caught. You could have your entire life and memories taken from you."  
  
"Machines can be unreliable. You are a man who has undergone a severe trauma and you are receiving high doses of morphine, which I'm afraid makes you an unreliable witness." He paused to take a long breath that appeared to be calculated to punctuate his meaning to Will. "Heads... or tails?"  
  
"Um. Heads...?" Will muttered, a cold sweat breaking out on his brow.  
  
The coin was in the air suddenly. It seemed to go up and come down again in painful slow motion. Lecter caught it on his palm and flipped that over so it was pressed against the back of his other hand. He left it covered for a long moment, assessing Will.  
  
Then he let it show. "Heads. He lives," he said, and pocketed it.  
  
Will frowned, suddenly feeling a sense of annoyance that it hadn't gone the other way. As soon as he realised his unbidden reaction had been noticed by the eerily observant Doctor, he balked in shame. He felt like he had been caught out in a lie, somehow; the falsehood that he was a good man, who could turn the other cheek and never wish death on anyone, even a lowlife scumbag like Delfonso.  
  
"Good night, Will," Lecter said, and took a moment to turn up Will's morphine dose a little. He then strode towards the door of the room as if nothing had happened.  
  
"You... you weren't really going to, _you know_ , were you?"  
  
The only response Will received was another one of those infuriating half-smiles and a slight bow, before the man disappeared into the light of the corridor.  
  
When he was awoken in the morning, Delfonso was no longer sharing his room with him.  
  
The nurse told Will he'd died of complications in the night.  
  
Though he knew he had no means to prove it, he felt a bold certainty that Dr Lecter had done something. Maybe he'd come back after Will went back to sleep. Maybe Delfonso had been dead before Will even let him flip that coin. All he knew was, it couldn't be a coincidence.  
  
The relief and the overwhelming note of joy he felt knowing that the sick bastard who had splattered Oliver's brains across the floor, for no reason at all, was finally dead, should have been a source of shame. But Will couldn't suppress the fact that he was pleased that some sort of justice had been done, even in unusual terms.  
  
*  
  
He was very surprised to see Dr Lecter at Arnie Oliver's funeral, standing at the back in a sombre suit that looked tailor made. Before Will had only seen him in scrubs, so it came as a surprise to see that the odd distinguished features were attached to such an athletic and strong looking form. He bristled a little at first at the intrusion but soon forgot he was there, too lost in empathy towards Oliver's wife and very upset young daughters.  
  
It had rained as they lowered the coffin, and Will hadn't complained as a large black umbrella was swept over him, shielding him. While all around him began to disburse, sadly, Dr Lecter was beside him, staring down into the grave, mirroring him.  
  
"You knew him for a long time," Lecter said, not making it into a question.  
  
"I knew him years ago, back in Carencro, before I headed to Georgetown University. He picked me up when I got kicked from the FBI and got me into the NOPD. I owed him a lot." Will sighed and rubbed his face.  
  
"Do you feel you failed him?"  
  
Will simply didn't know what to make of the way Lecter was so intent on delving into the darkness and pulling out the parts of his psyche he least wanted to confront. "It was my gun," he replied, simply.  
  
He allowed Lecter to help him slowly hobble painful across the grass of the cemetery and, though he didn't really know why, he accepted the offer of a coffee.  
  
It somehow came as no surprise to him when Lecter produced two perfectly packaged still-hot meals for them to share over the coffee, and he was impressed by the quality of the food offered to him. The surprise was to discover that hours had passed before he remembered that he didn't enjoy the company of others; there was something in the manner of speech used, the way Lecter expressed himself and understood the way he spoke in turn, that was hypnotising. Though Lecter was seven or eight years his senior, the synergy of thought was exact. But more than that, there was a slight private thrill in speaking to someone who spoke of his empathetic nature, and all the dark corners of it, as though composing poetry. He was used to people displaying an ugly, alienating curiosity. This was entirely new and it rendered Lecter's presence soothing. All pretensions to irritation faded away very quickly, leaving behind a warm companionship that disarmed Will completely.  
  
Even so, Will waited until their unexpected afternoon together came to a natural conclusion before asking, finally, "Dr Lecter, before you go I have to ask... did you have something to do with what happened to Delfonso?"  
  
"Please, call me Hannibal," was the only response given, before the Doctor walked away, smiling.  
  
Despite himself, Will found himself privately chuckling at the sheer audacity of this strange man, who didn't seem at all concerned by the prospect of a Police Officer believing him to be a possible murderer. He watched him glide away in his perfectly fitting suit, like he wasn't a part of the world but floating above it, watching the affairs of man and intervening for sheer amusement. He wondered what it would be like, to be so unaffected and confident.  
  
*  
  
The first time Hannibal touched Will in a way that could not be construed as professional was a light hand on the shoulder that warmed him all the way through his body.  
  
Molly was going to live, but her baby was dead. Will felt eminently sick, because he had known. He had seen it in the pained corners of her eyes on more than one occasion, that she was bruised, that her husband was a controlling asshole with a temper. He'd empathised and seen it all, as she sat at the reception desk at the NOPD, wincing with every movement, forever covered in long sleeves and scarves.  
  
The one and only time he had tried to ask her what was going on, to step in, she had made it clear that it was none of his concern, but softened her words with the idle contemplation that she might name her son after Will (she'd always like the name William anyway). He guessed that had meant that he was the first person to notice, or to at least say something. It had apparently meant something.  
  
The trouble was, he hadn't done anything else. She had no interest in getting her husband into trouble, unfortunately suffering from the worst of battered wife syndrome, and Will hadn't felt able to intervene any further. Even now, as she lay in a hospital bed recovering from his latest rage, her child taken from her in such a cruel way, she had made it clear that she would not say anything. Will suspected it was because she felt a sense of shame, working at a Police Department, surrounded by the very people who would be able to put a stop to what had been going on, and yet failing to say anything.  
  
He wondered if he could have saved the child if he had done something. The little boy who might have been named after him; might have become a godson, or something, as unreal as that would have felt. Will imagined scenarios where he did do something and changed his fate.  
  
The hand on his shoulder squeezed and he unconsciously lent into the touch, craving the support.  
  
He'd seen Hannibal a few times since the funeral, mostly at the older man's instigation. Checking up on his injury provided a good excuse at first, then it became further coffee and lunch dates, though nothing specific or pressurised. Will was naturally slow to accept the encroachment of this man into his life; wary at first, and simply unused to it. But over time he had become very comfortable with Hannibal. So much so, the touch on his shoulder made him want to curl around and fall against the man entirely, to silence the noise in his mind, just for a moment. From the way Hannibal was looking at him and lingering in the waiting room, it was clear that he understood without Will needing to say anything.  
  
"What would you do to a man who would hurt his wife like this?" he muttered.  
  
"A man who will never pay for his crimes in jail," Hannibal said, pointedly not answering the question.  
  
"An eye for an eye?"  
  
Hannibal swayed a little closer to him. "Makes the whole world blind, or so it has been said."  
  
"Would that be so very bad? Not seeing all of this... horror, everywhere, carved on the faces of children even. Maybe the whole world deserves to go blind. We should be left to squirm around in the darkness. The human race is an irredeemable mess, and it's always the innocent ones who suffer." He felt Hannibal's breath on his neck and allowed himself to imagine the gap had been closed, that he was no longer alone, even if he wasn't yet ready to go that far in reality. "I'm so tired of it all."  
  
There was a long, expectant pause. And then Hannibal said, "Last week in Texas, God dropped a church roof on the heads of 34 of his worshippers, just as they were groveling for him in hymn. I also read of a church collapsing in Sicily recently. The facade fell on 65 grandmothers at a special Mass."  
  
Will huffed, unsure of how to take that. "Was that God's plan?"  
  
"If He’s up there, He just loves it. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place."  
  
"That's an awfully roundabout way to say that it doesn't matter, any of it. That the whims of destruction go all the way to the top."  
  
"There is something to be said for embracing it. You seem to believe that the darkness of our world is a punishment. What if it's as much a gift as all the rainbows and newborns?" The hand on his shoulder had slid down and was stroking Will's upper arm. "Your reaction is perfectly natural. Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors, while cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself. Is one more valid than the other?"  
  
In a sweeping motion that Will didn't even hear or notice, Hannibal's breath was suddenly ghosting over his ear and the warmth of his body so close to his back they had to be almost touching, not that Will wanted to turn around.  
  
"Do not let your emotions interfere with your judgement, Will. You understand the actions of killers. It roots in your bones, the darkness. You see glimpses of it in the night. It grows inside you like a vine; you can either nurture it or let it strangle you. Your anger can be a tool."  
  
"You think I'm going to kill him?"  
  
"You've already thought about it."  
  
He hated Hannibal for a moment. It had been patently clear to him that there was something recognisably wrong with Hannibal Lecter since the very beginning. That Will hadn't run in the opposite direction demonstrated that there was something extremely wrong with him too. Though he still didn't know for sure that Hannibal had done something to cause Delfonso's death, everything he knew of him and his worldview told him that he was likely to be dangerous. Will had always excelled in the field of criminal profiling - his papers on the subject had been what got him into the FBI Academy - yet he couldn't quite get a reading on his curious surgeon friend. Either that, or he just didn't want to peer too deeply into that waiting void.  
  
Will drove from the hospital straight to Molly's house. He waited across the street outside in his car, his gun heavy in its holster. He watched Teddy Foster arrive home, swaying a little like he'd been drinking. He watched him wandering around the inside of his house through the windows. The anger was there but he was trying to control it, as Lecter had suggested, in order to focus.  
  
He thought of a hundred ways to kill this man without being caught. Even with one leg almost out of commission, he could make it happen with surgical precision. He could save Molly and put this worthless piece of shit in the ground, where he belonged.  
  
After about twenty minutes of watching him, Will stalked his way across in the shadows and used the key Molly left above the threshold to enter through the back door. He crept through the kitchen, gun in hand, and slid into the lounge, where Ted was knocking back beer and watching the television.  
  
Will closed his eyes and he was not himself, he was Delfonso and Waits and Jackson and Sumatra, and a dozen other criminal minds he had allowed into his own in order to get them caught and brought to justice. All fear and uncertainty drained away. As he got close, he put his gun away and grabbed the tie flung carelessly on top of his coat on the couch behind the unsuspecting drunk. Sumatra was particularly fond of ties, never killing the girls he pimped out but scaring them to death regularly.  
  
It all happened fast. He flung it over Ted's neck, over the back of his chair, and pulled him upwards, throttling him. The man spluttered in shock, spittle flung onto his chin, his beer can dropped on the floor by a frozen hand.  
  
"You don't deserve the air you breathe, you piece of shit," he growled into the man's ear. "Do you get off on it, huh? Hitting a woman. A pregnant woman? Did you care when you left her there, bleeding out?"  
  
Ted was trying to say something but there was no way he could get the words out. His fingers scrabbled fruitlessly at the fabric constricting his air supply.  
  
"You deserve to die," Will said, and watched the blood rushing into his head and his eyes bulging. He knew that he was seconds away from unconsciousness now and leaned in a little closer. "Lay a hand on her again and you will. Do you understand me?"  
  
Finally, he let the tie fall and strode out of the house. By the time he was back in his car and driving away, his heart was thumping and the taste of fear was burning through his tongue. He felt like a child who had called a name five times in the mirror, only to discover the dark creature was already there all along. He knew he'd gone too far; he hadn't killed Ted Foster but he'd wanted to, he really had. He'd really truly scared himself with just how easy it had felt.  
  
Will wanted to call Hannibal, but he realised that they hadn't actually ever exchanged numbers. So far, Hannibal had simply always come to him and found him, one way or another. He contemplated going to the hospital, where there was a likelihood he would be working late, but it wasn't really feasible.  
  
Instead he headed back to his tiny apartment on the top floor of a crumbling building the edge of town and spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling.  
  
*  
  
The first time he kissed Hannibal, it came as a surprise to both of them, but to Will the most. He wasn't so blind as to not know that Hannibal's interest in him seemed to be more than platonic, but he had never leaned in that direction and hadn't given it that much thought. So to be the instigator of it felt like another thread of self discovery.  
  
Even though he really felt he'd had enough of that already, since meeting Hannibal Lecter.  
  
Molly Foster's trial had affected him profoundly. All through it, he had been certain she would not be charged with outright murder. Molly had been so tearful and apologetic when he saw her; she had genuinely thought Ted would stop after what happened, when he came to her in the hospital full of remorse (and with a nasty line burned around his neck). But of course, he hadn't stopped, and so she had understandably finally snapped.  
  
Will testified about the so called 'alleged' beatings at the hands of her husband, saying everything he could to support her, and the medical documentation regarding her miscarriage was on her side too. However the prosecutor had been a crafty bastard, using Will's admittance that she had not said anything to people in the NOPD about her husband beating her, as logic would dictate she might if she had really feared for her life, to destroy her defence.  
  
He felt sick when the sentence came down. Ted Foster had deserved to be stabbed twelve times in his sleep. He'd deserved to be strangled with his stained old work tie. Will punched the wall on the way out of the courtroom in frustration and a nasty crack and a searing pain told him that he had broken some bones.  
  
He arrived at the hospital with a face made of stone and eyes staring into far off places. Naturally, he asked to see Hannibal and said nothing else while he waited four hours for the man to get out of surgery.  
  
Will followed a slightly tired looking Hannibal into one of the small assessment offices and sat on the medical bed, while Hannibal drew up a chair and sat lower than him. He watched Hannibal attend to his bloodied, swollen hand, wordlessly. Then he'd leaned forward and kissed him, not really knowing what he was doing except to act on his need for comfort.  
  
Hannibal froze at first, but then stood up so that he was the higher of the two of them, settling between Will's legs and looking down to return the kiss, putting everything that he was into it. Will felt a surge of relief and then a flicker of surprise and fear which made him break it off and look aside. Hannibal didn't seem to mind; he merely drew Will against his chest and clung onto him, holding him tightly, sensing that he needed it.  
  
Surrounded by the warmth and scent of Hannibal was like being shielded by the great black wings of a fallen angel. All was darkness, but it was a comforting, soft thing that he didn't know how he'd ever lived without before.  
  
First thing the next morning, Will made sure he was there when Molly was taken from the county jail and marched out to the van that would take her to one of the Reform Institutions. He felt a deep and abiding sense of shock to see her in a blue jumpsuit, her pretty blonde curls all taken from her, a number tattooed onto her skull. Her eyes were distant and sad, but she had seen him, and he knew that she was glad he was there.  
  
That was the last he ever saw her in the flesh, but it marked the start of the nightmares that began to haunt him, about being a killer; about being captured and sent away. For all that he was starting to learn to control his anger, at least a little, the fear simply wouldn't go away. He'd lived with it for so long, that fear of the evil living under his skin but now, it was worse than ever.  
  
*  
  
Will couldn't stay with the NOPD after that. Not with the very air of that place so smeared with all the sadness and the death. He'd never fitted in too well there anyway, so he knew he could leave pretty quietly. With Oliver and Molly gone, there was so one left to mind particularly, even if Gerald Redman, the Station Commander hadn't been too pleased to lose him after all the "big wins" he'd brought them.  
  
He decided to start writing the book he'd been meaning to put together after the FBI trained him up for four years and then, finally, refused to let him graduate. He'd outlined a monograph on determining time of death by insect activity but never got around to filling it out.  
  
While he knew he couldn't stay in his apartment for more than a few months before he'd have to find another job, or move out to his Uncle's old place in the middle of nowhere, West Virginia, it was the best idea he had for now. He doubted a publishing deal would land on his doorstep but it was just something he wanted to do; a bit of a finger in the face of the FBI.  
  
Things with Hannibal accelerated quickly. He was initially perturbed to discover that the man was not exactly on the same level of general impoverishment as him. He belonged to another world, where dinner parties were frequent and string quartets at said parties, essential. He liked opera, and tailored suits, and his cooking was an elevated art form. He was an incredible artist and Will had poured over his works more than once, he was so impressed by them. Basically, Hannibal was a European dandy, a man from another era, and Will had no idea what to make of him really.  
  
They kept up their coffee dates and Will began to spend his evenings in front of the fireplace in Hannibal's penthouse, drinking scotch he would never buy himself, curling up against him, kissing him, and slowly getting used to the idea of being with another man. It wasn't even that he thought of Hannibal as a man, in some ways, he was simply, just... Hannibal. His Hannibal.  
  
Time ticked on, a vague routine of companionship established. A few months into their slowly dawning relationship Hannibal informed Will that he was completing his final exams in the field of psychology and intended to leave the hospital to set up his own practice. In fact, he had already got a waiting list and an office in the centre of the city, currently being redecorated and furnished to his liking.  
  
"A Doctor _and_ a psychiatrist," Will teased when he was told, "I do know how to pick them." Though inwardly, he had started to dislike the sense that, no matter how much time he spent with Hannibal, he didn't really know the man at all. There was a wall, just beneath the surface, that shielded any further knowledge beyond the surface level. He hadn't even known that Hannibal was studying to be a psychiatrist, as well as working long hours at the hospital, and he had no idea where the man was finding the time to do it all.  
  
He found a publisher for his near-finished manuscript around about the time his money dwindled. His advance was modest, about enough to keep him going for one more month, but the prospect of having to leave soon was becoming an uncomfortable reality.  
  
Will hadn't mean to tell Hannibal the way he did, as if it was his fault. He didn't mean to imply that it was because of that invisible barrier that kept Will from ever really knowing him. It wasn't because of that specifically; it only made it easier. As much as Will craved the companionship Hannibal freely gave to him, they were such different creatures, with such different lives and backgrounds, he felt it was probably time to move on soon. They couldn't possibly really work out long term so it would be better to let it wane and remain friends.  
  
*  
  
He was extremely surprised to receive a call from his old station commander Gerald Redman, of all people, the very next morning, asking for his help.  
  
He wanted him to come in on a scene scene, just as a favour. Though the FBI were on their way, Redman wanted to have something substantial to tell them, given the brutal nature of the crime. When the name of the victim was mentioned, Coltraine Piers Wright, a bow hunter by profession, he remembered him in a flash; he'd been brought into the station, charged with beating his wife. Will remembered him because the sight of him had made Molly flinch.  
  
He was another one who'd gotten away with it in the end, when the wife withdrew her complaint.  
  
A dark and sinking feeling settled in his stomach, though he couldn't yet place what it was. Will agreed to lend a hand all the same, his curiosity allowing for nothing else.  
  
The man was found in a workshop, mounted on a table like a human pin cushion, all kinds of different implements driven into his body, from screwdrivers to sheers to an axe. Redman cleared the room of officers and covered his mouth with a handkerchief as he followed Will in.  
  
"They say uh, they say he was probably still alive when this was done to him," Redman told him, his voice muffled. "Most of the organs are over there, on that tray. Heart's missing. What do you think, Graham? Looks like some psycho to me."  
  
Will centered himself down onto the pendulum that swung in his mind.  
  
 _This man is a tribute. This man's crimes are incidental, a mere part of the message that will be translated; this art, my craft, is for the eyes of another. I want this person to see me as I really am. I want him to know me and accept me. I take my time in this task... I want this pig to squeal, to confront the reality of his own mortality and my control over it. I hold life and death in my hands every day, what's one more decision? I want to create the perfect picture, for the eyes of the only one who can understand me._

_I take the heart, as this person would take mine if he does not accept my tribute._ _He cannot leave me. I love him so dearly._

_This is my design._  
  
"No," Will whined in the back of his throat. "No."  
  
He took off without saying anything else, flying into the car park like he'd seen a ghost. He sat in his car for a few long minutes, staring into his own eyes in the mirror, almost hyperventilating.  
  
The man had been killed according to the injuries displayed in an old medical drawing. It was the Wound Man. Hannibal had copied that drawing in his own style and Will had seen it, more than once.  
  
And Hannibal had known he'd seen it.  
  
And of course Hannibal was a killer. Hadn't Will always known it? Ever since that strange night, when Hannibal had flipped a coin for a man's life, and probably killed him anyway even when the coin had landed to the contrary, he had known on some level. But even then, Will hadn't suspected he could be capable of something this brutal. This was... insane.  
  
He drove around for a while, ignoring the repeated ringing of his phone, trying to decide what to do. Coltraine Piers Wright had been a despicable excuse for a human being but had he deserved that? Will thought about Teddy Foster, and Molly, and Alfie Oliver, and hated himself for calming down so quickly.  
  
The problem was, on some level, Will considered that maybe the guy had deserved it. He understood exactly why Hannibal had chosen a known wife beater to make his twisted love confession and that in itself disturbed him greatly. Will wondered if he had empathised too closely with Hannibal for too long, but in his heart of hearts he knew that the rot inside him, the thing that robbed him of the ability to feel the sort of anger any normal person would feel in this scenario, had been there all along. Hannibal had seen it in him and come to him like a moth to a flame, not the other way around.  
  
He parked around the corner from Hannibal's place and came in hot and blazing. The door was unlocked and the lights were on. Hannibal was at his desk, drawing, like a man without a care in the world.  
  
Will had no idea what to do, or what to say. He stood there, breathless from running, staring at his back for what seemed like an age.  
  
"Good morning Will," Hannibal said, at last. "I do hope you'll stay for lunch. I'm preparing fillets of roast heart, which should be ready to eat in around twenty minutes." He finally turned in his chair and returned Will's gaze, with a slight smile and a note of uncertainty in his eyes that was near imperceptible.  
  
Will stared a little longer, finding it difficult to process all of the extra information that insight gave him.  
  
"Will?" Hannibal stood up and, after smoothing his waistcoat down, strode over to him, slowly. He was making a clear effort to appear entirely casual, but Will knew that he was holding his breath with uncertainty. When he raised his hand to cup Will's cheek, the spell finally broke, and Will stepped back, flinching.  
  
"Why didn't I see it..." he muttered to himself.  
  
"You did. Over and over. You just did not wish to accept it."  
  
He looked at Hannibal like he was growing horns and hooves. "You're a monster."  
  
That dart appeared to hurt Hannibal a little and he turned his head aside, eyes downcast. Will could see right through the confident facade and he found his heart clenching at the pain he could almost feel radiating.  
  
"And an absolute fucking idiot," he continued, and the viper inside him leapt out, taking control. Will kissed him, leaping into his own arms so fast neither of them had time to draw a breath. When he pulled back, he glared at Hannibal. "You ruined everything."  
  
"You wanted to know me, all of me," Hannibal breathed. "I gave you a gift."  
  
Will shook his head, sadly, and let his forehead fall to the crook of Hannibal's neck, where it fitted perfectly in place. "I can't do this," he said. "I can't live with this."  
  
"We can live with anything we choose. All you need to do is make the choice." Hannibal was rocking him now, holding him close, stroking the hair at the nape of his neck. "I want to spend my life with you," he whispered from a place far inside him, further than Will thought he'd ever encountered before.  
  
"You're a serial killer. God, what you did to that man..."  
  
"No less than he deserved." Hannibal kissed his forehead. "You once wished that the whole world would go blind for its sins... Be blind to mine."  
  
Will pulled away from him and rubbed his face with his hands, pacing. "I can't be blind when I understand them too much."  
  
"You're afraid that you might become like me," Hannibal stated. "Would that be so very bad?"  
  
The tug WIll felt in his chest physically hurt. Yes, he could become like Hannibal. It would be so easy to just let go, to embrace his feelings for this man, to let the version of himself that had wanted to kill Jon Delfonso and Teddy Foster out. They could make the streets run red with the blood of all the sickos, the druggies, the pimps and traffickers who didn't deserve to live.  
  
But in the end, the memory of his last sighting of Molly, and seeing that sad bald head with a number on it, stopped him. There was only one way this could end up.  
  
"Goodbye, Hannibal," he said, finally, and left.  
  
He went straight to his apartment, packed his bags, and began the long drive out to Wolf Trap.  
  
*  
  
Six months later, not long after the surprisingly successful publication of his monograph on determining time of death via insect activity, he'd accepted the offer of a teaching post in the FBI Academy in Quantico. He couldn't help the private satisfaction he felt at being invited to teach FBI trainees, when he himself had been ejected from their ranks.  
  
It came right out of the blue and at first, he thought he'd hallucinated the letter offering the post. He'd spent a lot of time in a bit of a drunken haze, trying to forget his time in New Orleans, dreaming about warm brown eyes and a strange dark stag that had been haunting him ever since leaving.  
  
Will had never missed anyone the way he missed Hannibal Lecter. Not even his father, who had disowned him for following his dreams of being in the FBI to Georgetown and drank himself to death when he was gone. He hadn't known he was capable of feeling such loss. A lifetime spent alone had rendered him immune, or so he'd thought.  
  
He knew more and more with every day that passed that he had been in love with Hannibal. He hadn't realised it at the time, of course, but he really had been. Not even the shock of what Hannibal had done to Coltraine Piers Wright had snapped him out of it. It just wouldn't go away, no matter how many whiskeys he knocked back in the dead of night.  
  
But there was no going back now. He had done the right thing, according to society's rules, more or less. Of course, he could never have put Hannibal in the crosshairs of the legal system, to be turned into an anonymous number and left to rot in places unknown. But he had at least walked away. All he could do was try to get through the mourning phase and get on with his now very empty-feeling life.  
  
Then a few days after he started work again in his new role, he received an impeccably handwritten note, etched in real ink.

 

> _My dear Will,_  
>   
>  _Congratulations on the publication of your monograph. I read through it with great interest. I feel quite certain that it will become a standard in the field. I have occupied my time writing a paper on surgical addiction, which is due to be published in the Journal of Forensic Psychiatry. I hope you will find the time to read it._  
>   
>  _I was recently offered the option of a practice in Baltimore and my new home is on Chandel Square. Should you ever require my services as a practitioner, I would be glad to provide them, pro bono. I am but an hour away from you._  
>   
>  _I think of you often._  
>   
>  _Yours ever,_  
>  _Dr Hannibal Lecter_

  
Will lay down on his ratty couch with the note on his chest, right where it made him hurt. He'd spent so much time trying not to think about Hannibal, to move on and not look back, the surprise was truly wrenching. He read it over and over, his mouth dry.  
  
Only after going through it tenth or twentieth time did he think to check the envelope it had come in. There was something else inside there.  
  
He turned it upside down and a coin fell into his hand.  
  
Will couldn't help smiling at the audacity of it. He knew exactly what it was supposed to tell him.  
  
Once again, Hannibal was giving him the option of Heads or Tails. A life with him, or a life without him.  
  
Except that, of course, whatever he chose, Hannibal would still do what he wanted. And what he wanted was for them to have a life together.  
  
Six months after rejecting him and walking away, and so much time alone, coming to terms with the reality of who Hannibal was, and who he himself was at the core, it didn't feel quite so wrong to wonder about it.

Will flipped the coin, but he didn't look at the outcome. Instead, he just put it away in his pocket.

He already knew what it was going to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Up next, after 54609 saved her life, Beverley Katz begins to question everything she thought she knew about the rehabilitation programme and has some very difficult decisions to make as a result...


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one. Being a plot-moving chapter it was a bit harder to write than the ones before it! It was originally supposed to be told from Beverley's perspective, and then nearly ended up coming from Will, but this just worked better in the end. 
> 
> This is possibly a little less interesting than earlier installments, but bear with me, this is all leading somewhere...

 

 

 

Most days, his office in Baltimore was a sanctuary. It usually contained the quiet balm of solitude that Hannibal required to focus. Other times it felt confining. When the clients were gone, he occupied his time with drawing, playing the harpsichord, reading his many books and polishing his ornaments, but the air was thicker on those days. It was harder to breathe.  
  
Often he would lie down on the grey chaise-long, close his eyes, and focus on the details of Will's face; not the cold unmoving statue in his mind palace, but the snapshot moments that he'd kept of happier times. He would recall the shades of his eyes that changed with his moods, the curve of his lips, the curls at the nape of his neck, his button nose, in vivid colourful and slowly captured seconds. It helped to chase the claustrophobia away and return his control to him.  
  
In his darker moments, the snapshots were poisoned with the thoughts of Will as a prisoner, in a cell, stripped of everything that made him so very special. For two years it had been a mercifully blurred image.  
  
It was so much worse now that he had seen him for real.  
  
Hannibal had felt restless and uneasy for several days. Though he had kept his control in check at the Home, seeing Will actually be subjected to the barbaric so-called therapies they meted out there had summoned a hot needle-like pain beneath his skin that wouldn't go away. Even though he had intervened just in time, the frozen image of that moment remained locked in his mind, festering unpleasantly.  
  
He hadn't seen Will since then and, while he didn't believe Chilton would be quite stupid enough to do anything else potentially mind altering while the prisoner was awaiting trial, there were no guarantees. Will was locked away from him once again and the bitterest slither of his mind was growling that it had all been for nothing.  
  
Hannibal had long since mastered the more defeatist aspects of his nature and so he did not allow those thoughts to take hold. He had found Will, gained a measure of access to the FBI, and he was confident of forming a useful 'friendship' with Dr Chilton.  
  
Despite that tiny voice of frustrated defeat, his more logical side told him that he was on the right course. The incident with the Shrike had been a setback, certainly, but Hannibal had been able to adjust his plans accordingly. Perhaps it would even play to their advantage, in the long run.  
  
There was a pawn on his chessboard that required careful manoeuvre to protect his interests, and given the media frenzy surrounding the case, time was not on his side. The trial was more far imminent than it would have been had it not been such a public case and so potentially embarrassing to the FBI.  
  
The knock on his door came, a little late, at five minutes past six. It had been one of those days when his office had felt confining, his pedestrian patients barely able to keep his interest, so he was privately relieved by the sound.  
  
 _Now to the real work_ , he thought.

Hannibal removed himself from the chaise-long and took a moment to straighten his clothes, maintaining the image of the consummate professional that was expected of him.

"Good evening," he said as he swung the door open. "I am glad you came."

Beverley Katz gave him a wince of a smile and awkwardly followed his invitation inside. Not the sort of person who felt much need to hide her impressions, she openly gaped at the cavernous size of the place.

"Huh, you must do good business," she remarked.

In some people, that might have been a rude remark, but Hannibal detected nothing in her tone to suggest anything other than a good natured jape. She didn't have air of envy that some carried on walking into such a richly furnished office environment.

"Passably," Hannibal replied, charmingly. "Although, as I'm sure Jack Crawford has discussed with you, this arrangement is not a professional one. You do not need to consider yourself a patient."

Katz nodded, still looking around. "Therapy yeah, not my thing. This is Jack's idea," she said, though her tone was not at all resentful. Just resigned and a little curious.

Hannibal indicated the seat opposite his own and waited for her to make herself comfortable before taking his place opposite. He could sense a note of conflict in her, something beyond the general sense of uncertainty over being there, and it was interesting to him. It was exactly what he wanted.

"Okay so, what do I do?" she asked with a sly grin.

He smiled in return, finding her general bemusement oddly endearing. "You lost a colleague. Perhaps it would be beneficial to describe how that has affected you."

The mirth faded from her eyes and she looked down, picking imaginary bits of lint from her kneecap. "The way a pointless death affects most people. It was shitty."

"I only have a very general idea of what occurred. Would you be so good as to run through the events of the day, for my benefit?"

Beverley clearly saw right through that inducement to talk it through but she was willing to go with it. "Okay, yeah. Well, you probably know that Fivey picked out the killer like you pick a number out of a phone book."

'Fivey?"

"Uh, the rehab guy we had sent over to us."

"54609."

"It's a bit easier to say than the whole five digits. Less weird too."

Hannibal quirked his head and indicated for her to continue.

"Jack told me you're the one who recommended him. I take it you um... you know who he was, before he was rehabilitated?"

"I believe we are here to talk about you."

" _I'm_ curious. He's a good profiler. Too good even."

Hannibal took a deep breath, assessing her. She was exactly as he had expected. "If I were to share any details of his past, I would most certainly risk my position."

"Oh I..."

"For example, if I were to tell you that he was indeed a profiler of some renowned once, I would most certainly be breaking the law."

Beverley sat back in the chair, staring at him with a mixture of surprise and amusement at the game he was playing.

"Just as mentioning the case of the Chesapeake Ripper could certainly cost me my position and good standing in this field... were it to become known."

Her eyes grew wide as teacups and she stared at him as though he had sprouted several extra heads. Hannibal looked right back with a jovial openness, watching the cogs of her mind turn on why he had dropped those breadcrumbs.

"And yet we're still not talking about what happened to you," he continued, satisfied that the seeds of thought were planted as he required. "You have been through an intensely traumatic experience. It is natural to wish to focus elsewhere."

"Are you telling me I'm avoiding?"

Hannibal smiled again, using all his charm to his advantage. "Avoidance is sometimes healthy, but I don't believe that to be the case here. Jack mentioned that you have been dealing with some anger."

"Anger?" she scoffed. "Yeah. Of course I'm angry. Everything went to shit and I don't even know why."

"So you were clued into the identity of the killer and proceeded to his address. When you arrived...?"

Beverly took a deep breath. "I guess Hobbs saw us coming or something because he killed his wife. Twenty years they were married, you know? Unreal. He cut her throat and threw her out of the front door. She hit the porch and just... went. Don carried on inside with his gun while I called for backup and tried to stop the bleeding."

"Mrs Hobbs died in your presence?"

"There was nothing I could do," she confirmed, quietly. The faint memory of blood on her hands flashed across her eyes like a guilty secret. "I heard a gunshot and a ran inside."

"Was this the gunshot that killed your colleague?"

"No no, he wasn't shot. We think Hobbs jumped him and Don tried to get a shot in. Hobbs slashed his throat with the knife... the same one he killed his daughter with next." She swallowed, hard, no longer seeing Hannibal, but looking through him to a point far distant. "I tried to stop him. I warned him not to do it, but I... I was too late."

"You shot him in the shoulder, exactly as you aimed."

"Yeah but he still managed to cut his kid's throat. I keep thinking... thinking that uh..."

"That you should have aimed higher?"

Her eyes focused in on him for a moment, and then she looked aside, uncomfortably. "I should have killed him straight out."

Hannibal leaned forwards a little in his seat with interest. He had yet to detect the dark instinct he could recognise in those who were like him in nature in this woman, but it was early days. "Have you ended a life in the line of fire before?"

Beverley went a little rigid at the question. "No. I'm a sharp shooter. I always get my mark and it's never been necessary to aim to kill. So far I've never questioned my instincts."

"But this man was different?"

"He killed three people in there without blinking and there was a second I thought... I really thought..." She closed her eyes and relived it; the barrel of his gun aimed at her head on the periphery of her blurry vision. Unconsciously, she rubbed her bandaged wrist. "Fivey saved my life."

Hannibal narrowed his eyes. "He is being held for the murder of Garret Jacob Hobbs... How do you feel about that?" Quiet seeds, gently planted, all the better to grow exactly as he wanted them to.

"I don't even know." Beverley rested her head on the back of the chair and looked up with glassy eyes. "He didn't need to kill Hobbs... or maybe he did. I don't know. It was such a blur. I was concussed."

"Relate to me exactly what he did." He hid the private spike of pleasure he felt at the thought of Will killing someone.

"Uh, well... Hobbs got my gun off me and smacked me around the head with it. He aimed it at me... and Fivey rushed him. The bullet missed. The next thing I knew, he had him in a headlock. Fivey looked at me and then he... just..." She mimed the action of snapping the man's neck aside with her hands. "It was crazy."

"Is that how you intend to relate the events of that day in court?"

Beverley's eyebrows shot up and she grimaced with discomfort. "I don't even know what I'm going to say there. He didn't need to kill Hobbs. Hell, he wasn't even supposed to get out of the car."

"It seems to me that, had he not, you and I would not be having this discussion." Hannibal gave her a moment to think on that point. "Have you considered that the source of your anger is not over the unjust death of your colleague, or of your failure to prevent the deaths of his wife and child; that you are acting out an inner conflict related to the fate of the person who saved your life?" Though her expression had grown guarded at the suggestion, he pressed on. "You and I know the fate that awaits him should he be found guilty."

"You know, I've never given the rehab programs they put guys like him through much thought before. I mean, like everyone else, I thought it sounded like the right thing to do. No more death penalty. An honest second chance."

"Statistically, those who commit murders as adults have typically been victimised or traumatised in some way earlier in life."

"Right. So it's better to take away those memories and help them reform." Beverley shook her head, frowning. "That's what everybody says."

"But you no longer believe this to be the case?"

She shrugged. "I never met one of those guys before. Fivey was just kind of, beaten down, you know? I felt bad for him. He used to shy away from mirrors because he couldn't stand seeing the number on his head. He thought no one noticed, but it was pretty fucking obvious. I suppose I never imagined what it would be like to be that guy, a blank slate but still kept under lock and key. Plus... well, he still killed Hobbs like he was trained to do that. So it wasn't exactly effective."

"Had you killed Mr Hobbs, it would have been considered defence in the line of duty. As an FBI Agent, you could have ended his life with few consequences."

"I... guess. That's not really... I didn't think of it that way."

Hannibal decided not to press the issue further. The desired effect was clearly being had, so now he had to let them percolate in her mind, to ensure that any conclusions eventually drawn would feel entirely unprompted.

He steered the course of conversation into gentler waters and let Beverley talk out the rest of the session without direction. He wanted her to leave his office feeling refreshed and willing to return for further gentle persuasion in the lead up to the trial.

After seeing her out, Hannibal returned to his chaise-long and stared at the ceiling, feeling a great weight lifting from him. He smiled to himself, knowing exactly what would now happen.

Tomorrow, or perhaps even tonight, Beverley Katz would start reading up on the Chesapeake Ripper. She would sit at her computer, looking at some old photo of Will, probably grainy and taken during his cop days because he didn't like photos being taken of him and that was all they'd found online, marveling at how different the man looked now his curls and glasses had been taken from him.

Her appalled reaction would soon be tempered by the numerous tattlecrime.com stories calling the trial of Will Graham a farce, and accusing the FBI of ignoring evidence linking later unsolved murders to the Chesapeake Ripper. The site, while less than reputable, was a popular one. Katz would find it and she would start to wonder.

She would think about that moment she was nearly overcome by her own mortality, of the death of her colleague and of Hobbs and of his family, and of the shy notes of unmistakable guilt.

While he couldn't predict what Beverley Katz would do, he was confident that the poison, once dripped into her ear, would do its work as he hoped.

It was well after nine when he finally left his office that night. He checked his files to ensure all were up to date and in their proper places, he dusted the surfaces and, as he always did before leaving, he paused before the black stag ornament and took a moment to breathe, repeating a silent promise. 

_Soon, Will. I swear._

  
*

The trial was a closed one, due to the involvement of a rehabilitated ward of the state. It was a legal requirement to keep 54609's number and physical attributes private in order to avoid a double jeopardy situation; should such a person be recognised, through media photos or descriptions, it risked previously committed crimes becoming known and prejudicing the prosecution of any current ones. It was a rare situation but there were precedents.

Regardless, Hannibal knew that it was only prudent to stay far away from the circus. Feigned disinterest was key. He followed the carefully worded details that were somehow being procured by Freddie Lounds, inadequate though they were to give him a decent indication of how things were going, and stayed well clear.

He simply had to trust Beverley Katz to do what he believed she was going to do. They had spoken several more times, Hannibal nudging her conscience towards the belief that maybe, just maybe, 54609 had been an innocent man all along and his innate goodness had saved her life. It wasn't exactly true, but it was a useful chimera to construct.

Hannibal had occupied his time getting to know Jack Crawford over several delightful meals of his devising, and Frederick Chilton too on separate evenings. With the former, he had nudged the belief that 54609 was too important a tool not to be given a second chance with the FBI should he be acquitted, particularly because Jack still needed to prove his judgement in bringing him on board right, all in the hopes of keeping Will free from the Reform Home. By entertaining the latter, he at least ascertained that Will was not being drugged up or electrocuted to ensure a fair trial, though it was enough to marvel at the thinly veiled void of intellectual ability in the man, like a child at an old time freak show. One could always use a useful idiot, after all.

But even with those distractions, he was restless. Every now and then, he drove out to Wolf Trap with the dogs in tow to allow them to have a few hours running about in the fields around Will's house. He had bought it through a private agent and owned the land, even if he never went inside anymore.

Sometimes he went alone, but that was normally late at night, when the dogs were asleep in their kennels and not even cooking could quieten his mind.

The night before the verdict session was due to take place, he unexpectedly found himself slowing down at the sight of a stray dog running along the deserted road. Hannibal sighed when he came to a stop nearby, a little exasperated to no longer be able to simply drive on, as he always would have done before Will. He stopped because he knew that, if Will were there, he would have been compelled to stop, and since by rights Will  _should_ have been there, he did it anyway.

It took some time to get the dog to come to him, but he had a few sandwiches in a bag in the trunk, which he'd forgotten to eat earlier in the day, and which had some cuts of meat he could use as a lure. The mutt wasn't in too bad condition but looked like he'd been running for a while. A worn out old collar told him that the dog's name was Winston, but nothing else about where he'd come from. He was fortunately quite docile and had a pleasing spark of intelligence about him.

Eventually, he persuaded him into the car and drove him to his house. Though it was gone midnight, he gave the dog a bath and dried him off, and then introduced him cautiously to the five other dogs in his care. He kept Winston apart from them overnight, just to be certain that there would be no fighting within the pack, and left early in order to take him to the vet to be checked over.

Winston was in good health but had not been microchipped. Hannibal's first thought was to find a dog shelter, but he knew Will wouldn't have let him get away with that. He would have taken the sandy little mutt with the big brown eyes in, no matter what Hannibal said to dissuade him.

That was how Hannibal came to be at the pet store, seeking a sixth kennel to have installed in the garden, when the call came. It was why Winston was the recipient of a deluxe model and a whole host of new toys and gadgets from his subtly overjoyed new Master.

Hannibal took some time to settle Winston with the pack and was pleased to find that he was easily accepted by them. He checked that their lodgings had been properly cleaned by his hired sitter and took delivery of the newest addition. He put food and water out for them all and locked them into their area before opening up his Rolodex.

Now that Will had been acquitted of wrongdoing in the case of Garret Jacob Hobbs, his focus was on persuading Jack Crawford of the need to retain his pet prisoner at the FBI.

Mr and Mrs Archimedes, they would do nicely. They were a post-Will addition to the Rolodex and, in truth, their transgressions weren't quite as extreme as most of the people whose business cards he retained there. They were simply some of the rudest, most gauche people he'd encountered amongst Baltimore's society elite. They were the sort to belittle waitstaff needlessly, complain endlessly for all kinds of imaginary transgressions, to create hysterical scenes with no basis, and to generally behave reprehensibly towards anyone deemed of a lower social standing than themselves.

He'd added a card with no great plan for them, only a vague sense that he would quite happily string them both up and make parts of them edible; either their pre-marinated livers or their overly exercised tongues could be put to far better use. They were easily accessible victims, barely a few miles away and he could reach their neighbourhood through the underground pipe network with very little effort.

Hannibal enjoyed the ritual of putting on his plastic oversuit and packed up his tools of choice for the evening. Then he descended into his basement and onwards into the pipes system he had come to know so well in his private travels around Baltimore.

  
*

"It's really messing with my head. The thought that, if any one of those people who go through the rehabilitation system were ever innocent, the very thing that is supposed to help them actually robs them of any chance to exonerate themselves."

Beverley Katz was in an agitated mood. The energy around her had crackled from the moment she entered Hannibal's office and it was still going. Hannibal had barely needed to say anything to tease her concerns out; she was more than ready to lay them on him, looking for guidance.

"Like, I really fucking hope it never happens, but how can we really know, you know?"

"There was a case some years ago in New York, where the family of a murderer were able to appeal the sentence of a rehabilitated ward based on new evidence. I believe he was indeed exonerated of the crime and received quite a sum of money in compensation."

"James Wormington, I know. Not a lot about him online but I got his name from a lawyer I called up."

"A lawyer?"

"I just wanted to know if this... if this was something that had a precedent. Like, if there might be some set in stone way to proceed." Beverley waved her hand in the air as if waving away his question, finding it unimportant. "Thing is, there was a blog post from one of James Wormington's relatives later saying he never recovered his memories. He was completely fucked up anyway. He could never escape that punishment."

Hannibal nodded, his eyes glinting in the light. "You're questioning whether it is worth pursing your suspicions." At her silent confirmation, he continued. "Mr Wormington is with his family. He is no longer locked away unjustly. He is able to make new memories to replace the old. Is that not just as worthwhile as recalling his past?"

Beverley narrowed her eyes at him. "You think Fivey's innocent too, don't ya?"

"I do not have an opinion," he said, probably too quickly. "I am willing to consider the possibility, however. You haven't told me what it is that caused you to alter your testimony..."

"Not alter, just reframe it in a better light..."

"Reframe your testimony to indicate that Hobbs broke his neck falling against the sideboard."

She gave him a wan smile at the lie she had told in court and looked out of the window.

"What changed your opinion of the Chesapeake Ripper conviction?"

 "Dates."

"Dates?"

"I went through the Ripper's acknowledged kills and, yeah, I don't think there were any alibis that stood up in court. But Will Graham was at a teaching conference for at least one set of murders that are strongly suspected to be linked. Maybe more." She shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know if that's strong enough evidence for a courtroom but it sure as hell made me go cold."

"I see."

"And then there are so many unsolved murders that really do fit the bill. I've seen a few of them since I joined the BSU. I think Jack Crawford has been wondering about it too." 

Hannibal titled his head in interest at that revelation. He hadn't detected any such considerations in the FBI Agent, but then again, the man was naturally adept at playing his cards to his chest. It was entirely possible that he was playing his own game.

After all, there was no way Crawford wouldn't have looked into 54609 before agreeing to him being picked for the job at hand.

"Has Agent Crawford stated as much to you?"

"Not in so many words," she chuckled. "No, he's kept well clear of Fivey. Hates the sight of him actually I think."

Hannibal cast his mind back to his first discussion with '54609', in Jack Crawford's office. He had certainly detected the FBI Agent's overt hostility towards him, and hadn't been particularly surprised by it, given that Jack Crawford had been part of the FBI unit back when Will was placed under surveillance, though not in charge at that point. He considered that Crawford may even have recognised Will, though Hannibal didn't know for sure how much the Agent had been part of that particular investigation. He hadn't thought much on it when recommending 54609 to the FBI's BSU, save to think it fairly unimportant to his plans.

The idea of Jack Crawford forming his own conclusions certainly piqued his curiosity. Even if he still found it quite unlikely.

"Have you mentioned your concerns to him?"

"Not yet. I need to know if it's worth it. I'm just... not sure." Beverley sank back in the chair with a sigh. She smoothed her hair out a little and shrugged it all off in that slightly endearing, slightly maddening way she often did in these sessions. "Anyway, thing is..." she began, and then started.

The buzz of her phone, situated on the table beside her, caught both their attentions. She checked the caller ID and got up with mumbled apology to Hannibal, moving away to take the call.

"Sir?" She listened for a moment. "Dr Lecter's office... Yeah, I can be at the office in about twenty minutes... no, I can meet you there but Zeller will need to bring my kit. Okay, sure. On my way."

"Something wrong?" Hannibal asked, putting on a masterful performance. He knew exactly what that call was about.

"Sorry Doctor. Homicide waits for no man."

"Something beyond the wit of the local PD?"

"I guess." She shook his hand, awkwardly. "Listen, thanks and sorry to cut this short."

"Not at all," he said, pleasantly as he retrieved her coat and helped her into it. "It has been an interesting discussion. I hope you will return next week."

Beverley smiled but was in too much of a hurry to respond either way.

He saw her out and sat down at his desk, waiting for a few minutes, measuring the ticks on the clock.

Then he left, as casual as always to the uninformed onlooker, but with a sense of purpose etched into his features like lines in stone. Hannibal drove directly to the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element and parked across the way, under the cover of darkness.

He waited and waited, and was at last rewarded with the sight of the front doors opening and Will, guards holding his arms on each side, hands locked behind his back, half pushed, half carried out.

Hannibal couldn't suppress the groan that naturally escaped his throat on seeing him. Will looked thinner and more ill than ever and it made Hannibal want to kill the guards, throw him into his car and simply drive away, never to return.

The urge was breathtakingly powerful. So few things in the world had the power to affect him in quite the way this man could; a peculiar condition he had at first taken for a temporary flight of fancy, until the prospect of being parted had woken something in him, alive and frantic, all those years ago. Even when Will had left him for half a year to wrestle with his conscience, Hannibal had experienced an entirely new facet for selflessness, enduring it as an act of love, rather than forcing him to accept the things he needed time to accept too quickly. No relationship in his life had ever inspired such raw honesty in him, but he had long since gone past the point of being afraid of feeling such devotion to another being.

He remained in place, fists clenched, as Will was listlessly guided down the steps and bundled into a car. After a few moments, it started up and drove away, receding into the dark distance.

It was the confirmation he needed that the plan had worked. Will was being summoned to have a look at what was left of Mr and Mrs Archimedes and the crime scene that he had painted, like an Old Master, just for this purpose.

The day was really going quite well, he thought as he drove home. Not only had Will been given a second outing with the FBI, but Katz ending her session early had given him some extra time to return home and prepare dinner.

Roast tongue; the perfect menu for the talkative likes of Dr Chilton.

He could hardly wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, the psychological toll of killing Garret Jacob Hobbs, of standing trial, of being at the beck and call of the FBI is naturally affecting 54609, so lucky for him that a certain consulting psychiatrist is about to take an active interest in his wellbeing...


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Poor Will. That's all I'm saying. Repeatedly. Poor poor Will.

 

 

Existing in the Institute for weeks without any therapies at all turned out to be the difference between surgery with or without anaesthetic. 54609 found himself longing for the haze of the drugs, wishing for the constant fear of the needles and the electricity, because without them, all he had left to focus on was the hideous clarity of his predicament. The insanity of the place, and everyone stuck in it, was far too clear to bear. Time ticked by slowly, with only the grunts and hisses of people being nudged into madness to punctuate it. He was suffocating, a rat in a ever shrinking maze, and there was no way out.

Sleeping was near impossible. Eating was unbearable. He existed in a cold sweat of fear and nightmarish self-awareness that the empty walls of his room could not contain. He relieved the moment over and over; the snap of a man's neck, bone crumbling beneath his fingers. He saw that dead girl's face imprinted on the backs of his eyelids, amongst the haze of red. It was a showreel going round and round in his imagination, all flashing lights and technicolor.

He really was a murderer. It was easy to doubt before, when he couldn't remember himself. But there was no denying that he'd made that phonecall that nearly got everybody killed. And more than that, killing Hobbs had been far too easy. He'd felt frightened at first, but then he'd felt powerful; an old memory he recognised somehow. It was a brutal moment of clarity that wouldn't leave him alone now.

54609 was eager for the trial to be over and done with. Though at first, the prospect of forgetting his time with the FBI, and the note of normalcy that he'd come to treasure during that time, had horrified him. Now he would willingly let it all go, just to forget again. It would be better to live out his days drugged to the nines, empty again, than to be forever left to dwell on what had happened.

He'd sat there, chained to a desk in the courtroom, listening to experts like Dr Chilton calling him an irredeemable psychopath. He had no basis left to imagine that they weren't absolutely right. By the end of it all, he'd been as convinced as they were that he deserved nothing but the worst sentence the state could give.

54609 had been genuinely shocked when Beverley Katz had come in and derailed the entire thing. He wasn't allowed to speak due to his status as a ward, so all he could do was watch, in mute wonder, as she recounted the events of the day with a false ending. He'd seen his own surprise etched on the faces of the lawyers as well.

He had been sent out of the room before sentence was passed, but he supposed that he must have been acquitted, or he would already be passed out on the therapy table, pumped full of drugs, maybe completely lobotomised this time, just to make sure he wouldn't do it again (he wouldn't put it past them). He should have been happy to be spared that, but instead he wanted to cry. The uncertainty of what was going to happen to him now dripped like acid through his central nervous system, making him shaky and uncoordinated. If he hadn't been able to eat or sleep much in the run up to the trial, he sure as hell couldn't now.

The click click click of the lock in the door turned and it opened without warning, but he was too lethargic to react save to turn his head aside a little. A guard pulled him from his bed and set him onto his feet, and a second put him in handcuffs. The two of them stood on either side of him, holding him fast, as the familiar figure of Dr Chilton appeared in the threshold of the doorway.

"Good gracious," he said, and pulled a handkerchief from his breast pocket, folding it over his nose with an exaggerated flourish, "it stinks of old sweat in here. Evidently you have been left too long without a clean up."

54609 shuddered at the mention of a clean up.

"You appear to be leading a charmed life, Inmate 54609. Despite proving yourself to be a shocking liability, Behavioural Sciences have decided to retain your services a little longer." His voice was slurred with sarcasm, so thick it practically irritated his throat. "Lord knows why."

The target of his comments within comments stared, not knowing how to feel about that news. Like everything else in recent days, it was too overwhelming to process. "R-really?"

"I just got off the phone with Agent Crawford," he confirmed with a sniff. "No doubt you will be returned with the next inevitable incident. Not that I will take any relish in saying 'I told you so' when you find your next victim. I do suggest you control yourself." He replaced the handkerchief in his pocket and turned to his guards. "Gentleman, please see to it that he is made presentable. An FBI pickup will be here within the hour."

There was no time to breathe the sigh of relief that perched on his tongue as Chilton finally left the room. The guards were already dragging him out to the shower block. It was late so there was no one else there. Still, privacy was not forthcoming, with the two men standing by, watching as he made a half-hearted show of bathing under the lukewarm water.

Next, he was stripped of all stubble on his face and head and given a fresh jumpsuit to hide inside. 

Some of the other inmates watched with curiosity but there was no way for any of them to talk to him, even if they cared to do so, as he was led away once again.

It was dark out when he was picked up by two Agents he vaguely recognised from around the FBI building, not BSU but a nearby unit. For some reason, he looked around for the raven he remembered seeing the first time he'd been taken from the Institute. It wasn't there this time and that seemed a little sad somehow.

54609 dozed a little in the back of the car, only jolting to awareness with the sound of the car stopping, his wrists red with the impressions of his handcuffs, leaned on too heavily in his short rest. He was expecting to see the FBI HQ frontage and was very surprised to see that they were outside a large house instead, surrounded by flashing blue lights and cops.

One of the Agents escorting him got out first to shoo a few people who looked like journalists away. 54609 recognised one of them, the redhead, as the same woman who had pestered him for a comment outside of the courtroom.

"Where are we?" he asked, tentatively.

The only response he received was to be helped out of the car and escorted up the path leading to the front doors. The closer he came, the more the place looked like a mansion, with big windows and steps leading up to the large double front doors, which were flanked by unnecessary pillars and a lot of foliage. The inside hallway was similarly opulent, if a little too much so for the dictates of good taste. The abundance of cops coming and going kept it from looking exactly at its best.

So they were taking him to a crime scene, not back to the HQ. His heart dropped a little at the thought, because it meant he was probably not going to be taken back to the quarters he had lived in there, with the private shower and the desk in the corner. Despite what Chilton had said, his immediate concern was that he was just on loan for the evening and would be sent back the Institute afterwards. He didn't dare believe otherwise without further confirmation.

54609 followed his escorts, eyes downcast, into a large room to the right and stood still while they removed his handcuffs. A word of caution about trying something was given and then he was freed. He looked up and was unsurprised to see Jack Crawford and his team there.

He was, however, surprised to see the two corpses suspended in the air with wires, both pretty mangled, with bits of their limbs clearly severed and wired back on again. A man and a woman, so far as he could tell, each face wired into a garish grin through the damage that had been done to the jaw and throat area of both. There was a pool of blood stained into the pinewood floor beneath them, thick and heavy drips still escaping the corpses here and there to add to the macabre scene.

It was truly gruesome and he couldn't help but cover his mouth as he stared, faintly grimacing.

"As you've probably gathered, I'd like your assistance with a psychological profile," Jack Crawford said. 54609 hadn't even seen him approach. "A married couple in their mid fifties. They were strung up and mutilated while they were still alive. We think they bled out."

54609 switched his gaze to Crawford, his head swimming with the awful overwhelming smell of blood. It smelled just like Hobb's kitchen, Don Kramer and young Abigail bleeding out on the floor. "I don't..." he began, and swallowed hard, "I'm not sure I can do this."

Crawford gave him a sceptical eyebrow rise. "We've got a seriously disturbed killer on our hands here. You're doing this whether you feel like it or not."

"Yes Sir."

The senior Agent leaned in a little closer, speaking with less force for once. "Look, I was hoping letting you see the actual crime scene while it's still fresh might give you some ideas. Mr and Mrs Archimedes were serious benefactors for the District Attorney, so there's some pressure here."

54609 was a little taken aback by the sudden softening of stance, though he appreciated it. Close up he saw some serious bags under the Agent's eyes and he couldn't help but empathise with his position. "I understand," he said and took a moment to compose himself.

He stepped forward and approached the corpses. Beverley Katz was somewhere in his peripheral vision, staring, but he had to tune her out. He had to tune all of them out. He reached out for calm, like a child reaching for a light, not quite sure how to grasp it but trying all the same. His imagination finally pushed through the frozen image of that orange kitchen and he saw the two corpses before him, wires uncoiling, cuts closing up, blood returning to them upwards, time being reversed in his mind.

_Neither of them notice as I approach. Another evening of drinking their hours away, another evening of tiresome conversation, never knowing that tonight they have facilitated their own deaths. I throw the wire around Mrs Archimedes' neck first and tie her to the edge of the chaiselong, choking. I make her watch as I string her drunken husband up in place on fake period beams. Then I do the same to her. Both may touch the floor to breathe; I want them awake for what I do next._

_This is done without malice. It's a work of whimsy. I want to create a spectacle of these useless old bones, nothing more. I take their overused tongues, silencing them, and split them both open to bleed to death. I watch them die with nothing but patience and I take my time creating my painting with the rest of the wire._

_I draw my inspiration..._

He circled around them to find the correct perspective.

_... from the fakery of their own constructed worlds. This scene is an imitation of the painting on the wall over there; a forgery of better work, just as their lives have been mere imitations of life._

_This is not planned. It is a design that means little to me. It is... just a painting. Created to be viewed and nothing more._

"Viewed by whom?" Jack Crawford asked, startling him. He hadn't realised he'd been talking out loud.

"Um... by us. It's a distraction." 54609 rubbed his forehead. "Whoever did this wanted attention but... there's a lack of, um, care?"

"So it isn't personal? They were random victims?"

"Oh no, I think he knew them. At least in passing. Enough to think them worthless. Whoever did this, he's killed before. He's comfortable with it. This, this was nothing to him. He's... strong. Fast. They never saw him coming and even if they had, they wouldn't have believed it until the very second he struck. He hides in plain sight. No one can tell what he really is."

Crawford frowned, mulling his words over. "So we're looking for someone who knew them in passing. Maybe someone in their sort of social circle."

"Look to the pillars, not the pariahs." 54609 was starting to snap out of the trance and he was springing back with a headache. His mouth was dry and the shadows in the corners of the room were pulsing along with the dull ache.

Someone must have noticed, because the next thing he knew, he was being taken outside. The fresh air immediately helped and he sat on the steps, just breathing it in. Apparently the order to start deconstructing the crime scene had now been given as the various forensics people were suddenly going in and out of the house with more purpose. He was hardly aware enough to notice however.

It took a good few minutes lost in his migraine before he realised that Beverley had been the guiding hand. She was leaning against the ridiculous pillar, giving him space but quite obviously watching over him.

"You okay?" she asked at last.

He nodded into his shoulder but avoided her eyes. 54609 longed for a long and empty sleep, to be away from the flurry of activity and that copper smell of blood that just wouldn't go away.

"You look like shit."

"Thanks."

So many words left unspoken, perched in the air, heavily. 54609 said a silent prayer that it would remain that way. He didn't have the energy for that discussion just yet.

One of the guys who had picked him up from the institute stepped out of the door with a bit more speed than was necessary, apparently only just realising that he'd lost sight of him. He indicated that 54609 should stand up, and then put the handcuffs back on him around the railing at the side of the steps, securing him there.

"You can leave him and go back in," Beverley said, looking oddly awkward and sounding a bit testy.

"But..."

"There's about thirty cops cordoning off this area. Trust me Phil, he's not going anywhere."

The FBI guy shrugged and went back inside.

54609 slumped back down onto the steps and leaned against the railings he was secured to. "Do you know where I'm being taken next?" he asked, not even hiding how weary he was feeling.

"Back to good old FBIHQ. Either that, or someone got the wrong memo when they put some fresh bedding in the lodgings."

He sighed and sagged with genuine relief. It was the best news he could have hoped for. It was another room with a lock, sure, but it felt a lot more like home than the hole he was confined to at the Institute. At least there, he felt useful. He had a routine and a job to do.

"I need to help with the clean up. Just sit tight and if no one's taken you by the time I'm done, I'll give you a ride over myself."

She hesitated at the threshold of the doorway as if she had more things she wanted to say to him, but the words didn't come, so she carried on inside all the same.

54609 sat watching the cops and FBI people coming and going and the distant lights still flashing from the street. Luckily, the house was pretty set back from the road and had some privacy, so he didn't think any of the journalists would be able to spot him there, chained up outside like a pet dog. It was humiliating enough already without that.

A raven landed on the path and hopped about for a few minutes and he watched it with a slight quirk to his lips. For some reason, it made him feel better, just a little.

*

In the few snatched moments of sleep his mind would vaguely permit, and with the dark stag forever looking on, he was haunted by the shape of a man with no face. Not a foe; he was not afraid. He was reaching for him, calling to him soundlessly, trying to pull him back from the darkness and all the blood surrounding the wires that were pulling him apart. He screamed and begged, desperately trying to hold on, his pleas swallowed in torrents of water which slid down his throat and choked him. Garret Jacob Hobbs was behind him, kneeling in a pool of blood and hissing, "see, see," and he was caught in a whirlwind of rage because, how _dare_ he. The man with no face had been taken and pulled apart by all the gleaming metal wires that had sprouted out of the darkness like weeds and he was outraged. He snapped Hobbs' neck, screaming for a loss he couldn't bear into the empty heavens.

At some point, he was brought out of the dream and came to face down on a cold floor, sobbing, the soft whine of, "he can't be dead, he can't be dead, he can't be dead," falling from his lips in small involuntary explosions.

"Hey Fivey, shhh, it's okay," Beverley Katz said, kneeling down next to him, her eyes wide with concern. "You were dreaming."

Heavy weight was pushing him down and he realised very belatedly that a body was behind him, his arms pulled back in a vice like grip. His breathing slowly calmed and he blinked rapidly, trying to banish the feelings of loss and hurt that had inexplicably overwhelmed him, grasping for awareness.

"I'm sorry," he gasped.

"Let him up, he's fine now," Beverley ordered, aside.

54609 could do little more than try not to allow his shoulders to be wrenched out of their sockets as he was yanked up and deposited back on his disheveled bed. He came face to face with Beverley and Brian Zeller, who looked a lot larger than he remembered suddenly.

"Just a nightmare," she confirmed, again, kindly. "Look, why don't you take an extra half hour and get yourself up and showered. We'll come back."

"Yeah, um, thanks. I'd could do with that."

She punched Zeller in the arm when he didn't snap to her words fast enough, but he soon followed her out after that.

The lock clicked back into place and he was left alone with the sound of his ragged heaves and the unexpected anguish. It had been so vivid, so horrifying, and yet he had no idea why or what it meant. He'd been existing in a haze for so long, it was a shock to the system to discover he could still feel so strongly.

He headed straight for the shower and let the water soothe the tense lines in his features away. He had the strangest feeling of deja vu under the cascade, some part of him lingering in that place he had been in the dream and recalling the rain. But nothing more than that would come to him.

The day passed by in a blur. He helped the team build the casefile on the wire killer and helped to draw up a written profile of the likely culprit. He wasn't allowed access to case files from other local murders, even though he knew that this killer was no novice, so he could only really focus on deciphering any extra clues that might have been inadvertently caught on camera.

The forensics team pulled together and 54609 was once again able to remain amongst them while they worked. It returned him to that tentative sense of normalcy that he privately treasured and the day went by quickly.

Returning from lunch in the cafeteria with Price and Zeller, he felt an odd perturbed sting to see that rude psychiatrist, Dr Lecter, leaving Jack Crawford's office. He was too far away to hear what was said, but paused and watched them, observing as Jack handed over an empty Tupperware box to the Doctor with a friendly smile. He appeared to be thanking him, so 54609 surmised that perhaps they had shared a lunch of Lecter's devising.

He started as the Doctor turned around and saw him, like a predator catching a scent, and continued quickly on his way, getting out of sight. For some reason, the strange Doctor sent an unpleasant a shiver down his spine.

54609 returned to the lab and, after a few moments of consideration, went and joined Beverley in the microscope lab. Price and Zeller were off in a world of their own and, much as he liked them, he found them a bit trying sometimes.

"Oh hey. You look like you saw a ghost," she said with a sly grin. "Cafeteria lasagne is not the best admittedly."

"Oh, no, it was fine." It was a lot better than the crap served at the Institute, but he didn't want to say that. "No I just, uh, saw Dr Lecter coming out of Agent Crawford's office," he said, vaguely waving his hand in the air.

Beverley straighten up from the microscope she'd been looking down and tilted her head, curiously. "Oh yeah? Hmm. Maybe he's consulting on the wire case."

"Looked like they were sharing lunch."

She snorted. "Jack's happily married. I'm sure it was nothing."

"No I... um..." He frowned, frustrated, because she could poke him and get a rise far too easily. "Nevermind."

"Dr Lecter's okay. I've seen him a few times myself. Got one hell of an office."

He leaned on the desk by the microscope. "Why?" he asked, not entirely sure why he was feeling so perturbed about the whole thing.

"Jack thought it might be helpful," she said, a bit more quietly, face falling, "you know, after what happened to Don."

54609 nodded and watched her as she stared down the microscope, eye not really focusing save to avoid some conjured snapshot from her own memory. "Why did you lie for me?" he asked, and immediately cursed himself for his bluntness. It wasn't supposed to come out quite that way.

She froze for a splitsecond but then recovered with an awkward smile. "Honestly? I don't know. Maybe because you saved my life. Maybe because Hobbs deserved it. Maybe I didn't want you to forget us." Beverley was trying to make light of things but it hung between them like a heavy blanket.

"I don't know how to react to that," he admitted. "I expected to be punished."

"Expected or hoped?" she asked, diving something about the way he was speaking, or perhaps from his expression. It gave her voice more of an edge. She seemed almost offended at the idea.

"I wanted to forget what I am," he said, and stared at his hands; the hands that had picked up that phone, the hands that had snapped a man's neck like it was nothing. "I... deserved..." He swallowed, hard.

When he dared to look at her face again, he couldn't help but shrunk back a little against the deep frown that was being directed at him. Her eyes were probing him, like fingers seeking purchase on the softest parts of his brain. It made him feel very uncomfortable, though he knew it wasn't intentional.

"I should uh, go help Agent Price with the... things," he muttered, seeking a means of escape. He was grateful that she didn't move to stop him.

54609 spent the rest of the day in the corner, staring through photographs of the crime scene they were working on, staying perfectly still and silent; making an effort to go unnoticed. Largely it worked and he was left alone.

The last thing he expected, as he was about to be returned to his room for the evening with a note of relief, was to be picked up by Phil, the Agent from the Criminal Division across the way, and put back in handcuffs.

He didn't even ask where he was being taken this time; just followed the order to go where he was told to go, miserably.

The last thing he expected was to find himself at Dr Lecter's door.

*

Half an hour had passed in silence. To Lecter's credit, he had allowed 54609 the space he made it abundantly clear he needed.

After the Doctor opened the door and welcomed both him and Phil in, he had worn a particularly angry expression the whole time he was left with his arms chained around one of the beams while the Agent did a thorough search of the room, securing it from possible escape. Lecter was the picture of smiling charm itself but 54609 wasn't fooled; he could tell he didn't enjoy the probing intrusion. He especially didn't like having his scalpel confiscated.

Once the Agent unlocked his handcuffs and finally went to sit in the waiting room, Lecter explained, "Agent Crawford agreed that it might be beneficial for you to receive some pro bono therapy, given all that has occurred."

"It's not very wise to be left alone with someone like me," 54609 said, practically bearing his teeth, though his body language was entirely defensive. He didn't know what to do with himself, body curling inwards, eyes stuck to the floor.

"That was my choice."

"How long do I have to stay here?" All he'd wanted was to lie down and curl up in bed. Being psychoanalysed really was the very last thing on his list of desired evening activities and it was making him rattle against the bars of his cage, more so than usual.

"We have an hour," the psychiatrist said, and then amended, "well, forty five minutes now." Lecter quirked his head, and indicated towards one of the seats, inviting him towards it.

It was only then that 54609 realised that he hadn't moved from the spot beside the pillar, despite no longer being manacled there. However, he didn't want to sit down. In a small act of defiance, he circled the office, arms crossed, not meeting Lecter's bemused gaze. Finally, he climbed the ladder leading up to the second level and sat down on the floor there, in the corner. "I don't want to talk to you," he said, and then didn't.

Lecter bowed his head, acknowledging his wishes. He took a seat at his desk, took out a pencil and continued work on a drawing of what looked like some kind of stately home.

54609 let the time tick past but felt more and more uncomfortable with each passing minute. He was being rude, he knew. It really was an impressive office, meaning the Doctor had to be of some note. The way he was dressed for work denoted a man who made a lot of money doing what he did. He probably had a whole book full of wealthy clients he could be seeing instead of sitting around, not talking to him.

"I'm sorry to waste your time," he said, finally, after half an hour of scratchy silence. "I didn't ask to come here."

Lecter looked up and smiled, a more genuine thing than 54609 had seen before. "If silence is the most helpful thing I can offer to you, then I am glad to do so."

"Silence is not what I would choose."

"Then let us do something of _your_ choosing."

54609 stared at him, wondering what to say next. "I just want to sleep," he admitted.

That pleased smile appeared at the edges of Lecter's eyes again and, unexpectedly, 54609 found himself returning it. He stopped immediately when he realised what he was doing, so unaccustomed to smiling genuinely himself that it actually alarmed him.

"I'm told my chaise-long is an adequate spot for a nap," Lecter offered, amiably, as though sharing a private joke.

"You say that as though you've never tried it?"

"I've never had the occasion to."

"Afraid of your own medicine, Doctor?"

That sparked something a bit more grotesque and primal in Lecter's smile, though it didn't frighten 54609 quite as much as before. It amused him. When the clock struck quarter to eight, he decided to dislodge from his hiding place and return to the lower floor. He still didn't go to the seat that had been offered before though; he wasn't going to give way on that, at least. Instead, he wandered around the perimeter of the room, taking in all the strange objects and pieces of art dotted about.

"Why am I really here?" 54609 asked, as he roamed.

"I believe I told you why."

"No, there's something else." He wasn't quite sure why he was speaking so freely now, but there was something about being in Lecter's presence that emboldened him, like he could absorb some of the poise and stability the man seemed to emote and ride it like a wave.

Something about the way Lecter's expression slowly changed, became oddly tender and unguarded, told him he was right.

"Why am I here? This wasn't Agent Crawford's idea. You persuaded him to it." He absentmindedly ran his fingers along the top of the unnecessary looking harpsichord in the corner of the room. "What do you really want from me?"

"What do you believe I want from you?" Lecter asked, lightly, playing the therapist.

54609 shrugged. "Are you writing a paper? Are you looking for a guinea pig?"

Lecter moved in a little closer, pointedly not responding. The Doctor almost seemed to bring the shadows in with him, and the whole room was centering down in on him, reducing the space down to the small point of space between them.

"What is it?"

He moved further along and jolted to a halt when he came to a dark figurine set on a sidepiece that grabbed his attention with all the ferocity of a punch; a lowing stag, its mouth ajar, its neck distended. All at once the room was filled with flashing lights, bursting in the periphery of his vision in white shocks that overloaded his ability to see.

All the air was sucked out of his lungs and everything around him went into a spin. He felt his body go rigid and he distantly recoiled from the sudden weight and heat against his back, a nose pressed into his neck, arms holding him as he shuddered and his eyes rolled back into his head, darkness coming to claim him with the violent passion a damned lover.

In the final second before his mind shut down, he heard a voice in the distant well of his mind. "Time to wake up," it whispered, before casting him into the void.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, the story of how Will finally came to love and accept the real Hannibal, murderous rampages and all, all those years ago...


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the show, we never actually see who Tobias Budge was making gut strings out of before he got diverted by discovering Hannibal, so I filled that blank in with promising young musicians. And at least in this universe, Franklin never encountered him - I imagine he lives out his life eating cheese, becoming ever more neurotic and getting passed around psychiatrists. Stay happy little, guy.

 

 

**NINE YEARS AGO**

 

 

Will didn't go to Hannibal straight away after receiving the letter. His nightmares prevented that. The coin was constantly turning in his mind, beams of gold light caught on its rim and blinding him. Molly's blonde curls lay in piles on the floor and a filthy tie was choking him, pulled by unseen hands. Alfie Oliver was staring at him from somewhere dark, his eyes filled with sorrow, his brains half hanging out of his temple. The gun that killed him was in Will's hand, caked in blood. The fear that was chasing him through his dreams was overwhelming; he could taste it on his tongue every time he woke up in the night, covered in sweat and shivering.

At first, he continued self medicating with cheap whiskey, trying not to dwell on it. But it was like Hannibal was in the corner of the room now, watching him; he didn't want to be seen like that, absurd as that was. He knew that he still cared, still needed, far too much. The whiskey quickly lost its appeal and all that was left was the silence of his self imposed solitude.

The old house in Wolf Trap had at least turned out to be next to a good spot for fishing and he spent long hours wading in the river, living out his father's lessons, finding a sense of calm in the monotony. Sometimes he imagined blood spurting out of his catches as he gutted them in his kitchen, Hannibal's hand resting over his, and he had to catch his breath, so overwhelmed with want, so sharp edged with anger.

He hated Hannibal for being a habitual murderer, mainly because he couldn't deny that he had known that he probably was right from the start and, well, what did that say about Will Graham, that he had come to love him all the same? Before landing in New Orleans, he''d gone to Georgetown, left everything behind to become an FBI Agent, believing he could do some good in the world. But the fact was, there was something wrong with him; the FBI had seen it and cut him loose and Hannibal had seen it too. The desire to help people and save lives had not left him, but there was something dark and very deadly inside him that had been poisoning his best intentions all along. That was painfully clear now.

The clarity of his solitude had at least given him a lot of time to think. It had been painful to acknowledge certain truths; to shatter every last illusion about who he really was and accept that he had all the essential ingredients to make a very bad person. He knew that he had run from Hannibal in a haze of fear and found it amusing to consider that he'd fled from the arms of a murderer into the deep well of self realisation, where he'd found that the inky darkness he'd seen within that man had been inside his skin the whole time too.

Sometimes he scratched at the scar on his inner thigh where Hannibal had stitched him back together after being stabbed and half expected it to bleed under his fingertips. Its position made it impossible for him to touch it for too long though, drawing out an uncomfortable arousal alongside the inevitable visions of those brown eyes that had held such a raw devotion in them.

On one occasion he had dreamed of Hannibal operating on him, right there, using his teeth, and he had woken up throbbing. It was still always a shock when he felt such things in relation to Hannibal; Will considered that he should have known himself a lot better, for a man pushing thirty. He should have seen them coming, these urges. He'd always considered himself quite vanilla in such matters before falling in love with a murderer, and a male one at that. Never too late to have all one's personal illusions shattered, he supposed.

He lasted about four days before he couldn't take the longing and the wondering that the surprise note had inspired anymore. Will told himself that the nightmares would probably only stop if he confronted things head on. The trouble was, he had no idea what he wanted to do. He knew that Hannibal would never stop pursuing him if he opened that door again - the coin that was sent to him had told him that quite clearly - and he was certain he should have been repulsed, or at least more guarded. A good man would be. A good man would turn Hannibal in and stop him from killing anyone else.

Yet none of it mattered as much it should have, that essential ingredient of rationality entirely lost to him when it came to Hannibal Lecter. After the letter had placed him in Baltimore, instead of New Orleans, Will's heart had started to clench every time he thought he spotted his outline in the back of one of his classes, or in another aisle of the supermarket, or across the street. His overactive mind was playing a lot of tricks, knowing he was so near.

He knew that he had to do things on his terms. In time, if he waited, Hannibal would come to him, but he knew the man was trying to give Will the illusion of a choice, which was touching in a way. But he needed to take charge. Hannibal had to know that it would take some time, and some boundaries, and slow movement. He would need complete honesty; something he sensed would be difficult for Hannibal, who hid his true nature in soft edges of fine linen and the crafted facade of normality.

Will finally made the decision to go to Hannibal's new practice, reasoning that seeing him in his workplace would render things a little more professional than it would be if he went to his home. He also decided not to make an appointment and to just arrive unannounced, to avoid any awkward pre-discussion. Fortunately, the location wasn't hard to find online.

It was intended to be a discussion about boundaries, and moving slowly, and all the sort of reasonable decisions people were supposed to make. That was what Will rehearsed on the way over.

Except that, the look of sheer surprise and adoration on Hannibal's face the moment he opened his door and saw him there, standing in his waiting room, was like a spark to a flame. Something corresponding must have registered in his own expression, because Will found himself wrapped up in arms and the calming, soothing scent he had forgotten. All the old feelings he'd barely known how to acknowledge surged through his core and he let the moment happen, let Hannibal press his nose into the curls of his hair and run his large-palmed, weighty hands over his back.

"Forgive me, Will," Hannibal suddenly muttered, stepping back and composing himself. The moment was suddenly quite strained. It was quite clear to Will that Hannibal hadn't expected to have that reaction, any more than he had expected to want it.

He shrugged, smiling awkwardly and ducking his head, and went into Hannibal's office without risking further conversation.

The cavernous room was filled with boxes, piles of books and half unwrapped ornaments. He draped his jacket over a grey chaise-long that was pushed against the wall by one of the windows and took a moment to catch his breath, seeking composure. It was a good distraction to look around the place, hands in his pockets.

Hannibal watched him from the doorway, uncertain himself how to approach the situation.

"This is um, this is a big room," Will said, trying to be casual. "A little odd somehow, but beautiful in its own way. I can see a lot of potential."

"As can I," Hannibal said, solemnly, tracking Will around the room with his eyes.

"It's very you."

For some reason Will's eyes settled on the black resin figure of a black stag which had been left on top of a pile of books on the desk. He ran his fingers over it, idly. Hannibal moved in behind him, the approaching warmth of his body like a magnet that Will had to actively stop himself from leaning back into.

"We have a lot to talk about," Will said, quietly.

"We do."

There seemed to be no good place to start. Will felt tense, his thoughts fogging with the knowledge that Hannibal was there, right behind him, waiting to hear his thoughts. Hannibal, who he'd spent months cursing and missing in equal measure.

"Do you regret coming here today?" Hannibal finally broke the silence.

To that question, Will smiled, sadly. "I regret a lot of things. I regret what you are. I regret that I had to leave you before."

"You didn't have to." Hannibal's voice was smaller than it normally was. Oddly vulnerable.

"You know I did." He turned to him and fixed him with a penetrating stare, of the sort he had never managed to maintain with anyone else. "But I'm here now."

"Yes. You are." Hannibal was swaying on his heels, apparently having to make an effort not to close the distance between them and reach out to him.

"I want... I want to know everything."

Hannibal quirked his head to side, frowning, curiously. His hands were clamped behind his back as if he was afraid of losing control of them again.

"No secrets. You will tell me everything about you. Every act of cruelty. All the deaths you've brought about. All the details. I need to know..." he faltered momentarily, but knew that he had to say it, "I need to know the risk. No... if you're worth the risk."

He saw Hannibal swallow hard.

"You saw what happened to Molly Foster. If you ever got caught... how would I ever go on?" There it was; that burning coal at his core that hurt him so.

At last, the psychiatrist visibly relaxed. His expression softened and he moved forwards at last, pulling Will back into his arms, brooking no argument. "Oh Will," he sighed into his ear.

"Now do you get it?" Will said, with a warning edge of anger. He gave Hannibal an annoyed shove to the chest and stepped away from him, fleeing the intimacy.

"I do. A similar concern began to prey on my mind some time ago." He was speaking very softly now. "It was the reason I decided to move into psychiatry."

"It... it was?"

With a curt nod, Hannibal leaned himself against the desk, in front of the boxes and the stag ornament. "I regret that there was no time to tell you this before. Our parting made it impossible. This entire endeavour was intended to allow me to study the human mind more closely; in essence, to test ways to subvert the punishments I might incur were I to be caught. The rehabilitation programmes have flaws in their systems. The human mind is a deep chasm of information and thoughts, after all. There are ways to train it to return to itself, no matter what abuse it has suffered. I have taken certain steps with regards to keeping my own mind already, but meeting you made it a matter of far greater urgency to find a truly comprehensive solution."

Will settled against the desk beside him, listening, mirroring his body language exactly.

"I could no more tolerate the loss of my memories of you than I could tolerate the loss of air."

The more Hannibal spoke, the more Will relaxed, hypnotised by the soft tones of his voice and the hazy half-glow of the dimly lit space around them.

"I have done all this for you, Will." Though he said nothing more, Will heard the intimation behind his words; _I will do whatever it takes, I love you, I love you, return to me_.

"I need more than that." Will admitted, a supplicant at the devil's confession box. "I need to understand why you... do what you do."

That caused the ghost of a smile to shade across Hannibal's face. "You understand uncomfortably well. When you ask for honesty, do you want it from me or from yourself?"

"Oh I've had plenty of time to be honest with myself." Will sighed and let his hand slide along the side of the desk a little, enough to allow his fingers to brush over Hannibal's. He watched the little judder it produced disrupt Hannibal's posture with a bemused sense of power; that such a predator should be so easily bent by his whims felt almost obscene.

"I will not ask you to dine at my table," Hannibal said, making a very clear effort to school his voice into passivity.

The faint memory of a remark Hannibal had made about eating the heart of his Wound Man inspired victim returned some feelings of confusion to Will. "Is whoever you're serving up not very tasty?" he asked, making light of it, because it was too difficult a discussion to approach just yet. "Or was Wright a one off?"

"A particularly chatty lamb will grace my table this evening," Hannibal told him. "One of no great loss to the world, I assure you, and I would gladly share my meal with you, every bite, if you wished it. However, that is not for now."

"No," Will said, breathily, hanging his head.

"A companionable drink, instead. Let me build a fire. Come sit with me, like we always used to."

Will felt a gentle palm on his cheek and his head was lifted, eye contact occurring naturally.

"Come every evening. Come always. And I will answer every question you care to ask as truthfully as I know how." Hannibal leaned closer and pressed his lips against the corner of his mouth, not presuming any else, but promising more in future. Instead of moving back, his eyelashes fluttered as he let his nose press against Will's. "Say you'll come, Will."

With a sigh, Will drew away again. He folded his arms over his chest and went over to the long slit of a window, where the light from outside was bleeding in, intruding upon them. He stared out, even though it hurt his eyes. "We mustn't be seen together," he said, and turned back. Seeing confusion flit across Hannibal's face, he continued, fists clenched, the seriousness of his contemplations making his expression hard, like stone, "I've been imagining this for months on end, Hannibal. Every ugly permutation of how this ends between us. If you were ever caught, I would have to do anything to remain free. Because if you were taken and sent to one of those institutes, I would need to find you."

Hannibal's eyes widened a little. "You would rescue me?"

"This is not a game to me."

"Will..." The Doctor seemed quite taken aback, a long moment of silence stretching out between them. He was shaking his head, apparently searching for something to say; it was a very uncommon sight and not one Will ever expected to see again. "Will...," he breathed, again. "I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, in this moment. A halo of light, the shining threads of dust spinning about you, like wings, like flies. My avenging angel. My own soul made flesh."

For a brief second, Will almost could see himself from the other man's perspective; not surrounded by light but a dark thing of dust and flies at least. "This world is an ugly place. We are ugly in it," he said, with a snort of amusement.

"True beauty rises above the chaos. It lives in the power we hold over life and death, and the savage pleasures we are born to." Hannibal extended his hand, palm upturned. "Come here."

Will hesitated, as he always did, but went to him all the same. He placed his hand in Hannibal's and let the other man draw him close and extend his arms around him, securely, like a straightjacket.

"You are correct, we would be best never seen together," Hannibal agreed, once again pressing his nose into Will's hair and breathing him in, perhaps reassuring himself of his presence after their long separation. "My home has alternative routes of entry. I will show you every one. Will you come?"

"Heads or tails. The ending is always the same, isn't it?" Will said, and finally let himself sink into the darkness of Hannibal's arms without letting the chains of guilt tear him away.

*

Will kept to his word. Under cover of darkness, most evenings, he drove to one of the most hidden away entry points Hannibal had located and descended into the disused underground pipe network that existed, vein-like, beneath the city of Baltimore. Hannibal had already tampered with the various points that had been boarded up or locked down, making it into a secure tunnel system for his own use. He gave Will keys and tutored him in the symbols he'd added in fluorescent paint, visible only under ultraviolet light, which acted as signposts. It was a good two mile walk through the darkness to get to Hannibal's home, but Will persevered.

Hannibal also kept his word. He allowed Will to tease out more and more information about his activities and why he had come to be this way. He let the name of his long dead sister fall from his lips, and confessed his boyhood loves, his Uncle's wife the first and last great feature of them. He spoke of the orphanage and the years spent in mute contemplation therein. He told Will that he thought of the follies of God when he killed, and the follies of man when he made use of parts of his victims for dining. Will deduced that his dinner parties were not a chance to show off his fine living, as he'd previously thought, but more of a prank; it amused Hannibal for society elites to feast on the flesh of their own, and Will hated the part of himself that saw the funny side in that. Long hours spent helping his father to fix up the lake boats on Lake Erie as a teenager, teased by the offspring of the idle millionaires who owned them for his poor clothes, his poor manners, his poor father, had left Will with a half buried grudge against the wealthy. And, it turned out, an innate understanding of Hannibal's irritation for those with hostile manners, though he could never condone the extremes of his punishments.

It wasn't long before Will grew comfortable enough to rest in Hannibal's arms again, strange as that should have seemed, given the relentless darkness invoked in their discussions. He lay against him while he listened to Hannibal describe his many many victims, from the strays he caught for private dining, to the more public 'art pieces' he liked to make when the mood took him, to the sounders of three he killed when preparing a dinner party feast.

Eventually, the day came when Will asked a question which necessitated Hannibal retrieving his Rolodex, where the business cards of all the rude and unworthy that crossed his path were kept. They sat on stools together at the island counter, and Will took the cards out, one by one, and asked him to describe the transgressions of each. Hannibal had an eidetic memory and was perfectly able to provide intimate details of every encounter.

Will listened to his recollections, silently at first, and simply tore up any card that did not meet with his approval. Though the action was met with some irritation at first, Hannibal soon relaxed when he realised that Will was allowing him to keep quite a few of them, and quickly grew to enjoy the undertaking as it became a game of attempting to persuade Will to his way of thinking. It took hours and hours, ranging well into the early hours of the night, and by the end the Rolodex was greatly slimmed. 

Since he hadn't been in Baltimore long, most of the cards were from people who had been encountered in and around New Orleans, and there were several that hadn't needed an explanation to Will - names he recognised from his time in the NOPD - all of whom moved up Hannibal's mental list of targets.

That was the first night Will ever stayed over, and though he took up the guest room, it was another step towards the sort of intimacy that was starting to preoccupy Will's thoughts more and more. In some ways, Hannibal was too respectful, entirely content to allow Will to initiate their slow kisses and caresses by the fireside, never pushing for more. He'd given no indication that he even desired more, leaving Will simultaneously grateful and confused. He lay awake for a while that night, wondering what it would be like to crawl into Hannibal's bed and embark on the new road of discovery that lay therein.

In the end, he didn't act on his impulses, trusting that their cerebral connection would inevitably plunge into something more physical when the moment was right. He remained where he was and awoke to the sound of harpsichord keys.

*

"You're distracted this evening," Will commented one night a few months into their routine of quiet hours together. Their conversation was usually flowing and easy, but for some reason it wasn't this particular night.

Hannibal blinked and a shadow passed across his eyes, his lips pursed into a slight frown. "Forgive me."

Will was lying with his head on a cushion that had been laid over Hannibal's lap for his comfort, He tilted his head to nuzzle the hand that was idly stroking through his curls. "Tell me what's on your mind."

"Did you read of the death of a trombonist from the Baltimore City Orchestra yesterday?"

"The human cello?" He'd seen something about it in the paper; a man with his neck hollowed out and a cello neck shoved down it, his vocal chords reportedly hardened into strings somehow. The victim was discovered centre stage at the Opera House, left under a spotlight. "A killer, serenading someone specific, with that ridiculous display. Maybe another musician, or at least someone he admires for some talent or another."

"I believe it was for my benefit."

That certainly got Will's attention. He sat up immediately and swung around to face Hannibal, concern and a dark edge of jealous anger etched across his features.

"I unexpectedly had dinner with the killer last night. He was... interesting."

Hannibal was away in his thoughts and it made something inside Will burn to imagine someone else trying to get his Doctor's attention. He remained where he was, though his fists grew clenched and the frown that graced his forehead was a deep one. "Oh?" Will asked, with an accidental growl. "Who was it?"

Hannibal looked at him with a bemused smile. "No one of importance."

"That's not the impression I'm getting." Will swung one of his legs over Hannibal's lap and kneeled over him, a leg either side, his fingers sliding onto his silk lapels as leverage. Will delivered a gentle nip to his bottom lip, feeling suddenly quite emboldened. "He's rattled you."

"Not at all."

Will ground his hips down and settled himself on Hannibal's lap, in a position that would have been quite delicate without the barrier of clothing. The lie earned Hannibal another bite to the lip. "Tell me the truth," he warned. He snaked his fingers into Hannibal's hair at the back and then yanked his head back, placing his neck at the mercy of his tongue.

This was a game they hadn't played before. Will felt a jolt of heat press into his backside as he nibbled along Hannibal's jawline and with it came a giddy sense of power. Hannibal's eyes looked like fire, as they always did in low light; the eyes of a predator, revealed as not quite human, or maybe beyond human. Those red dots were glazing over because of him.

"Tell me," Will warned, and rocked a little against him.

"I had not thought you so easily given to jealousy."

"I like to protect what's mine."

"As do I," Hannibal said, his breath all caught up.  "I assure you, I am in complete control of the situation."

Will rolled his hips harder and let the groan it produced reverberate through him. "Are you?"

The next thing Will knew, he was pinned down to the rug on the floor beside the fireplace. All pretense of civility was lost in an instant, the buttons of his shirt sent flying with a hard tug, Hannibal's mouth roaming over his skin. Will rolled his hips and groaned at the sensation. A lot of long nights spent with half imagined imitations of this moment reduced to a single point and then exploded like glass, shattered by the superior version of reality.

"Oh, oh... what are you... what you doing?" Will groaned as his pants were unfastened and yanked down, the jangle sound of his belt sounding obscene.

"I have decided to eat you," Hannibal told him, perfectly reasonably, entirely wickedly.

Will would only realise that he'd been intentionally distracted away from his questions about this mystery admirer long after Hannibal had blown the fuse of his mind with the most exquisitely drawn out blow job he'd ever had, a finger curled inside him at the last moment that made him see stars. He'd then short circuited his world by finding his own release over Will's naked chest, coming in hot stripes that felt like a branding, before curling beside him and sleepily murmuring his affections in three or four different muddled up languages. Hannibal next pulling him into a shared shower and soaping him up from head to toe, languidly kissing him under the spray until Will was boneless, didn't help either.

That didn't mean that Will was any less jealous of the thought of someone trying to get Hannibal's attention when he finally woke up. It just meant that he knew he would have to be more subtle.

First thing he did when he woke up to the smell of breakfast cooking, was to sneak downstairs and cautiously seek out Hannibal's phone. He quickly made a list of the most recent numbers to have called in, or been called out, and the corresponding contact names where available. Once his list had been safely hidden in his jacket, he padded into the kitchen in his boxers and let Hannibal cook a omelet with some beetroot and pumpkin seeds for garnish for breakfast.

There was no time to follow up on his list straight away. He didn't even have time to go home to get changed and instead had to drive to the FBI training academy to deliver lectures directly. But as soon as he was free, he spent some time researching the names he'd harvested from Hannibal's phone.  
  
It didn't take long to receive the desired insight. One Tobias Budge, proprietor of the newly opened Chordophone String Shop according to online listings, had called Hannibal around 6:30pm on the evening in question. It didn't take a genius or an empath, or even an ex-Cop, to make that connection; the human cello had been strung together by a strings expert. It was almost disappointingly simplistic.  
  
He had no idea if this man was a serial killer, or a struck fan who had taken his first bite of the apple, though the confidence with which that trombonist had been dissected and displayed made him think that Mr Budge was probably an experienced taker of lives. Will didn't know how or why his attention had fallen on Hannibal and nor did he really care. Nor was his concern regarding Hannibal's safety really; it wasn't as if Hannibal couldn't take care of himself. It was just that there had been something, not quite discernible but definitely there, in Hannibal's manner that told Will there was something more to the story. It told him that Hannibal wasn't in control of the situation and that made it his business to find out what was going on by other means.  
  
At least, that's what he told himself as he parked up a block away form the shop and concealed his old service revolver beneath his jacket, just in case. He walked the short distance to the premises, which turned out to be the first floor section of a large fifties townhouse, and listened to the sound of vibrating cello strings coming from within.  
  
Will entered with no more intention than to gain an understanding of the layout, but he realised his mistake when he roamed closer to the sounds. A teenager was playing in the corner of one of the rooms, under the observation of a man in a grey suit. The moment the man turned, Will knew.  
  
He'd seen this man before.  
  
That first night he'd stayed over at Hannibal's home, he had woken to the sound of harpsichord notes. Seeking out Hannibal, and still half asleep, he'd roamed downstairs and sought out the sound. A man with dark skin and a grey suit was in the lounge room with the harpsichord in question, apparently replacing or at least adjusting the strings, tapping at them with a tuning fork each in turn as he worked. Will was pretty sure he had backed out of the room before being seen, but he wasn't completely sure.

Budge turned around and they locked eyes. Will honestly couldn't tell if there was any recognition in them at all, though they had that same controlled insanity, that predatory shine, that he knew so well from Hannibal's. The playing stopped abruptly and shook Will from his moment of reverie.

"I am with a pupil," Budge said, slowly, so controlled, "I will be with you shortly."

"No need. I'm just, uh... browsing."

Budge watched Will turn and retreat, back into the connected room that formed the main shopfront. There was a staircase leading up to the rest of the house, violins and violas mounted along the wall decoratively, a discreet till area in the corner near the front door. It was tasteful to the point of being finicky and there was a clear attention to detail in decor. Will knew he had to look beneath the surface to see the truth of the place.

His cop's nose led him to a door concealed in an alcove beneath the stairs. There were no 'Staff Only' or 'No Entry' signs, but in trying it, he found it locked. Standing close, he picked up a faint odor of sulfur and something metallic, like old rust, smothered by bleach and disinfectant smells.

"My workshop," Budge's voice jolted him. "Nothing of great interest, I assure you." He hadn't heard him coming over the din of badly played cello music coming from the adjoining area.

Will did his best to recover himself. "I was looking for the bathroom."

The lie lingered between them for a long moment, dancing across Budge's lips, which were quirked in a half smile.

"I'm afraid I do not have a facility for customers. There is a deli across the street, however, if your need is urgent."

"No, no, I can wait." Will ventured back into the main area of the shop and indicated towards a display cabinet, where a slightly worn violin was on display, lit in spotlight. "I was just wondering about this instrument," he said, now recovered well enough to bluff. "I was expecting a Stradivarius locked away here but this doesn't look like much of anything."

Budge nodded, smiling. "That piece belonged to Jean-Marie Leclair. He was one of the most celebrated violinists in Europe during the 18th Century until he was found stabbed to death in his home in Paris. The perpetrator was never caught. Nor was there any motive. It's worth more than the average Stradivarius for the history alone."

"I see." Will certainly did see, right through the facade of normality that Budge was projecting so carefully. "A little out of my price range, I would imagine."

"May I ask what you are here for?" he said, and Will thought he picked up a faint trace of layered meaning. Maybe Budge did recognise him after all.

Feeling a little cornered, Will said the first thing that came to mind. "Rosin. For my niece. And for my ears."

Budge nodded and went to retrieve a small pot from a selection case. Will made his purchase, not questioning the advice given on brand, and left without further ado.

He moved his car to a concealed spot where could still see the front entrance of the shop, and he waited there, watching. The shop closed at five, Budge seeing his young pupil out at that time. Will watched and waited for a while and was rewarded when he saw Budge leave the house at around six thirty.

Will put on his gloves and went over to the shop, using the darkness for cover. It was a simple matter to break the lock and step inside; he'd learned a lot of tricks at the FBI training academy, and what he hadn't learned there, the NOPD had filled him in on. Gaining entry was simple.

It seemed quite obvious that, if there was anything incriminating to be found, the workshop was the place to go. And he was not disappointed.

The lingering smell was not improved on going down into the dark hole that served as a basement. Numerous sinks lined the wall, white strings of gut hung over them. He hadn't had a flashlight in his car, so he switched on a lamp on a desk nearby. He was surprised, yet not surprised, to see cut out diagrams of dissected bodies left out on display, a newspaper article half visible beneath them. Will pulled it out and snorted at the headline, 'Promising Young Musician Still Missing'.

An experienced killer, then.

Will went over to the sinks, where the smell of chemicals was at its worst, and peered in. Long swathes of intestines were swimming in the bottom, like pinkish stained snakes. He felt his stomach turn.

Some animal instinct suddenly kicked in and he knew he was not alone. Will grabbed his gun and listened closely. He raised his hands and managed to block the gut strings that were thrown over his head in an attempt to strangle him.

"I wonder," Budge growled in his ear, "what do you have, that I do not? Why does Lecter keep you, when he could have an equal by his side?"

Will grunted with the effort of holding those strings at bay, feeling them sheer into the skin of his wrists as he wrenched, blood trickling down. Budge was strong and bigger than him by nearly a foot. He knew he only had one chance.

"A bigger gun," he said, and used the moment the strings slackened a little to angle his hand past his head.

Everything exploded into a high pitched whine, the close proximity of the shot he let off near enough to deafen him. He knew he had hit Budge but he couldn't tell how badly. He slipped out of the string garotte and was thrown forward, his forehead catching the edge of the sink before he hit the floor, vision swimming. He remained conscious just long enough to see the silhouette of Budge escaping up the stairs but couldn't help but drift.

*

Will had managed to wake up and get out before any cops showed up, for which he was grateful. He knew that someone somewhere would have reported the noise of the gun shot, and he had the presence of mind to leave over the back wall and circle around the block to get back to his car. Then he left the scene at a speed far higher than was probably safe, given the tenuous state of his vision.

There was no question in his mind as to where Budge would go next. He had known Will was there on Hannibal's behalf. He had a feeling the man would be out for blood and probably some reassurance of his own superiority. Men like Tobias Budge were all the same.

By the time he made it to Hannibal's office, his hearing was more or less back to normal but he was feeling somewhat woozy. He didn't bother to leave his car out of sight or conceal his flying entrance in any way. He ran inside, through the waiting room, and found himself at the tail end of the fight that was ensuing between the two.

Hannibal was bloodied at the mouth and seemed to be limping a little, but otherwise he looked like he was holding his end well. Will felt a surge of pride seeing him lashing out so gracefully, holding his own, even though Budge was the younger man.

Both turned as he entered. The look on Hannibal's face was a sight to behold; surprise and relief, sharply rendered. Budge immediately ran towards him, his eyes wide, his nostrils flaring with anger.

"Stop!" Will yelled and pulled his gun, just a fraction too late for it to be of use.

He was lifted and thrown aside as if he weighed nothing. It made his head throb even more.

Hannibal pulled Budge back and the fisticuffs continued. Will groaned but managed to turn over, needing to see what was happening. He had no idea where his gun had gone, except to know that it was definitely no longer in his hand or anywhere within reach.

He watched Budge throw Hannibal against the ladder, causing the man to snarl and watch him. Will could see Hannibal waiting for the right moment, the predator in the grass, about to pounce. He hadn't seen him like this before, so unveiled, so raw. And perhaps it was the head trauma, but it made him shine like a ruby under the light. Will was reminded of Hannibal's words when he'd first returned to him - _'I wish you could see yourself through my eyes, in this moment... my avenging angel... my own soul made flesh...'_ \- and he finally understood.

Renewed somehow, Will staggered to his feet, determined to support Hannibal in this fight, no matter how much it pained him.

When Budge dove into a heavy blow, Hannibal stepped aside so that his arm went through the space between steps on the ladder, and he brutally snapped it at the elbow, causing Budge to cry out. Will felt the sound in his gut and it was nothing but pleasurable to him, seeing the lesser man put in his place.

Grimacing, Hannibal circled around it and delivered a fast snap of a blow to the other killer's neck while he reeled with pain. It winded Budge and the man sank to his knees.

Hannibal was swaying and staggering a little and Will wanted nothing more than to kiss away his pain. But anger was rising in him now and he grabbed for the nearest thing he could find, a big heavy slab of resin carved into the shape of a stag, and slammed it down on Budge's head, as hard as he could.

The moment he went limp and hit the floor, heavily, Will let out a barked laugh of triumph and let the object fall from his hands. He doubled over, half laughing, half crying, unexpectedly overwhelmed with the mix of emotions that came with ending a life.

A hand massaged the nape of his neck and he was told to pick up his gun, get out, and go to Hannibal's house and wait for him.

The last thing he heard before he ran out was Hannibal on the phone, calling the police, reporting the attack.

*

Hannibal seemed a shade of his usual self when he finally came to Will that night. He was bone tired, that much was obvious. Will wordlessly led him to the shower and cleaned the blood away, taking great care not to touch his wounds, nor to aggravate his own. He dressed the stab wound on his thigh and led Hannibal to bed, neither bothering with nightwear.

"He told me you were dead," Hannibal said, simply, and buried himself against Will's body on the soft sheets, clinging on tightly.

There was nothing Will could say. He could apologise for acting recklessly in pursuing Budge, perhaps, but it was all what it was. He knew it was not really necessary; Hannibal did not require that from him. Nor did he feel remorse. He was glad to have rid the world of Tobias Budge. In a strange way, he felt lighter; absolved of the sins of not killing Jon Delfonso and Teddy Foster.

An eerie expression of pained affection came over Hannibal's face as he rolled aside momentarily. Something was retrieved from beneath the pillows, and he settled over Will, clearly unsteady still due to his wounds, but his jaw set in determination. Will watched as, slowly, he worked his fingers inside himself, those shining eyes locked onto his.

Will felt overwhelmed, privileged even, when Hannibal finally sank down onto him and began to ride him, knowing all that had been taken from Hannibal as a child in a cold orphanage and what it meant to him to allow himself this intimacy. Will let him do as he pleased and then rolled and pressed him into the sheets, holding his lover tightly, making it an act of confession for them both; a passionate embrace borne of a genuine and rare love that could never be broken.

And when it was all over, Hannibal kissed along the scar on Will's thigh, where he had once sewn him back together, and said something barely audible but which sounded like a prayer of thanks. Then he fell into a deep sleep, nestled against Will's hip.

Will carded his fingers through Hannibal's fine hair and also drifted away to sleep, where the newly forged figment of a black stag awaited him on the peripheries of his dreams, for the first time, but not the last.

*

**EIGHT MONTHS LATER**

 

"What exactly are you planning to shoot me up with?" Will asked, eying the syringe Hannibal was checking over.

"A cocktail of my own devising. I assure you, I have tested it extensively."

Will snorted. "On your patients." He sighed at the blatant unprofessionalism of Hannibal using his patients as guinea pigs in such a way. They really did have a lot to talk about in terms of better hiding in plain sight.

He watched as Hannibal placed the syringe on the table in front of the chair where Will was to be seated, next to a metronome with a light fixture attached to the pendulum.

The office was dark and the light hazy, by design. The clock on the desk was striking 7:30pm. The air was dry, the fall leaves outside sweeping past the windows in the wind and casting quickly glimpsed shadows to and fro in the room.

"So explain to me how this is supposed to work?"

Hannibal took Will's hand and kissed it, before returning to his preparations, a clear spring in his step. "We are going to construct a mental pathway; a mansion or a palace, if you will. We will build it from the ground up, plank by plank, every room a memory stored in safe isolation."

"Just with me?"

"No, we will administer to each other, in turn. You are now in as much danger of capture as I am."

Will shifted a little, still a little sore from their previous night's exertions. "Shared passions."

"In a number of ways," Hannibal replied, glowing with amusement and more than a little satisfaction. "This process may take months, perhaps years, but in time, our minds will be fortresses."

"Built on shared ground."

"A home locked with chains."

"One they can never break into."

They smiled at each other, at the habit they had of speaking with one mind in flowing words that passed between them with ease.

"I will administer this mild mix of psychotropic drugs," Hannibal continued his lesson, "then I will activate the flashing lights on the metronome to assist you into the desired state of mind. Once duly prepared, we will talk through every memory you have of your life and incorporate it into the safety of your mental palace."

"Any side effects?"

"Insomnia, night sweats, general feelings of unwellness, but only at first. In time we will become accustomed to the process."

Will looked somewhat unimpressed by that but didn't protest. He took a deep breath, shot Hannibal a look as if to say, _'you're lucky I love you'_ , and then sat down in the chair. "Fine," he said. "Let's do this."

"There is one final thing to be decided."

"Of course there is," Will chuckled.

"Every home requires a key."

Without any further thought at all, Will's attention fell onto the stag statue on the side table against the wall. That thing had long since embedded itself in his psyche, the object that had put down not only Tobias Budge, but also the Will Graham of old, with all his delusions and fears, giving breath to the stronger person he was now.

Hannibal lifted the object and turned it over in his hands, a soft expression crossing his features. "Oh, when mine eyes did see you first, methought you purged the air of pestilence. That instant was I turned into a hart, and my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, e'er since pursue me."

"Shakespeare?"

"Twelfth Night... my own version." Hannibal moved the object to the table, placing it beside the metronome and the syringe. "The stag is fitting to this purpose in so many ways."

He moved the corresponding chair behind the table and took his place opposite Will. Hannibal made one last check for air bubbles in the syringe. "I do not believe we will ever have cause to need these measures," he said, "but you were always right in your insistence that we prepare for the worst outcome. There is nothing to fear, my dearest Will. I promise you this. It will feel like a dream and I will be with you throughout."

Will rolled up his sleeve and out his arm. "I trust you."

"Then let's begin."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, Hannibal's design is finally starting to come together...


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm really really sorry. You'll um, you'll know why when you reach the end.
> 
> The direction all this took (specifically the ending) actually wasn't the original plan at all. One of those things where you have a vague idea of how something will go, but just find the plot veering when you least expect it. I rewrote things and I think it works, but I kind of made myself sad *sigh*.

 

 

Hannibal was in the mood for a little improvisation. He let his fingers dance across the antique keys of his Harpsichord with a sense of amusement and anticipation, and as always, his mind wove the chords together almost without his needing to think about them at all.

He reveled in the contrapuntal arrangements that were springing to life, just like the interwoven movements of pawns he was so successfully orchestrating around himself. It just all seemed to be coming together so easily now, though the progression was a little discordant still.

**Aminor sus2**. Dr Frederick Chilton. Since their initial meeting, he had eaten four meals at Hannibal's home, pawing at the silverware, the coat he hung in the hallway a treasure trove of dead hairs and lost bits of DNA. _All very useful_. And since the man didn't have a secretary at the Institute, it had been relatively simple to access his computer and delete a few diary records while he photocopied some notes on his worthless studies to give to Hannibal, for his perusal. Not too many entries; just any that obviously conflicted with his requirements. He also left a crested ring that had belonged to Mr Archimedes under some papers in the top drawer of his desk for good measure.

**Bbminr, bass note Db**. Beverley Katz. So delightfully spinning to his tune. Her suspicions about 54609 being an innocent man were clearly no flight of fancy. Indeed she was turning out to be quite the sleuth. A few days prior to Will's seizure in his office, Beverley had informed Hannibal that she intended to petition for the confidential closed police transcripts related to the Chesapeake Ripper case. He suggested she first go to Dr Chilton and attempt to retrieve his set of confidential files, knowing that it would be to no avail, save to introduce them to one another. A pawn facing another pawn. _All very useful_. And once that attempt had naturally failed, he encouraged her to return to her original idea, since Hannibal had not been able to get hold of the transcripts himself for fear of blowing his cover, and he was quite curious to know more of how Will had been convicted, despite the inconsistencies in the case.

**Cmajor Aug4, the Devil's tritone**. Agent Jack Crawford, the final piece. His backing would give Miss Katz a fighting chance at getting hold of those sealed files. He'd gone to the BSU with a lunchtime taster, not only to persuade the Agent to let him see 54609 as a patient, but to come dine with him. A meal shared between friends. So simple a tool. _All very useful_.

He decided against serving up anything too obvious, on this occasion at least. Hannibal was not one to tempt fate too often. The dominoes were lined up but he needed to be completely sure of the direction of their inevitable fall. For this meal, he made mincemeat of the frozen leftovers from Mr and Mrs Achimedes and made a gourmet lasagne, complimented by a nice full bodied Chianti.

"I'm sorry, Jack. I don't know what happened. He was somewhat listless when he arrived, said very little, and the seizure occurred very suddenly. I do not know what might have triggered it."

Crawford nodded, apparently accepting his explanation for the unexpected hospitalisation of his pet prisoner. "You don't think they fried him again at that damned Institute?"

Hannibal winced, playing the necessary part in the play of his construction. "I was assured not, but Dr Chilton is troublingly evasive... oh but forgive me, it does not do to speak ill of my professional colleagues."

"Evasive?" Crawford paused to hold up his glass as Hannibal offered a wine refill.

"The psychiatric field harbours a high number of ham radio enthusiasts and other personality-deficients... and Dr Chilton does not appear to be the exception."

The candidness of his response made Crawford chuckle into his glass.

"I admit to my own flaws of nature as well," Hannibal continued, "including a curious and roving eye. You seemed upset by the thought of this prisoner undergoing further therapeutic treatments. Might I ask why?"

There was a long pause, the silence punctuated by the sound of Crawford breathing in heavily through his nose, holding the breath in while he contemplated what to say, and then slowly exhaling in the same manner. "I suppose Beverley has told you that she thinks he was wrongly convicted?"

Hannibal had to clench his jaw to stop his face from betraying his amusement at the confession. "I cannot discuss anything spoken of in the privacy of my practice. However, I can at least relate my own impressions." He paused to sip some wine and let the drama of his words resonate. "There have always been certain inconsistencies and curiosities in his case. I have been through the files of hundreds of prisoners as part of my research on the criminal rehabilitation through amnesia programs, but his was the first to have been specifically assigned to a facility after a petition from the administrator." That was a complete lie, but not one Crawford would be able to crosscheck. "That alone made me curious about him."

"I'm not sure I follow."

"He has received special attention from our friend, Dr Chilton. Twice daily shock treatments, more drugs prescribed than I've seen before." Again, lies. Total lies. _But useful ones_. "Perhaps he hoped to perfect the methodology of amnesiac rehabilitation and profit from him in some way. Either way, that is how this prisoner drew my attention. Naturally I researched his crimes and, well, you must have read the many stories on that tattlecrime website, claiming a cover up."

That made Crawford quirk an eyebrow. "You're not telling me you believe that asswipe of a news website?"

"No. Your Agent Katz is more persuasive, however."

Crawford shook his head, starting to get visibly annoyed. "There was no cover up," he said, voice taking on a more forceful edge. He sounded almost defensive. "Frankly, even if there was, do you know how many people's asses would be on the line for even suggesting that we got it wrong? I mean, that was a big case. Bigger than anything I've worked on."

"I take it your predecessor was in charge at that time?"

"That was the case that got Prurnell promoted upwards and gave me my shot at heading up the BSU. If I so much as breathed any of this around her, she would drop me back to narcotics and bury me there."

Hannibal feigned a sympathetic and concerned stare in his direction. One which made Crawford flinch back from it.

"I believe Agent Katz is trying to gain access to the confidential police reports for the case," Hannibal said, with all the apparent air of a helpful friend. "Perhaps the answers will lie within them."

Crawford blinked at the idea. "And what if they tell us that the this guy might have been innocent all along?"

"I'm sure you will act as your conscience dictates," Hannibal said, and it felt just like thrusting a knife into the man's ribcage.

From the flinching reaction his words earned, he guessed that it had felt much the same on the other side too.

*

"Miss Katz..." he said with a start, frozen in the act of putting his gloves on. "I must apologise if there has been an oversight, but I don't believe we have booked a session today..."

"No, I just..." Beverley looked a little sheepish. "Sorry Doc, I should have rung ahead. You're obviously on your way somewhere."

Hannibal fought back a wave of irritation and impatience in order to smile and put her at ease. "I was about to head over to the hospital. But I'm sure I can spare a few minutes."

She had a thick file of papers cradled in her hands, browning and musty smelling even from a distance. "I've been reading transcripts and listening to audio recordings all night." Her whole demeanour was jumpy and her breath smelled of coffee. "I was going to show you some of the files, but nevermind that, I'll cut to the chase," she babbled at twice her normal rate of speech. "He pleaded guilty, no contest. That's why all the inconsistencies with the dates and all of it - and believe me, there are loads - never made it to the trial beyond a few cursory proceedings."

It was a few moments before he realised he was staring at her, frozen, a cold sick feeling dawning in his veins. "He pleaded guilty?"

"On the audio tapes, he said he would confess to everything because he wanted to forget it all. But there are transcripts where he describes certain known historic Ripper kills completely incorrectly. Plus the stuff with the dates. Basically, everything I need to prove that he can't possibly have been the Chesapeake Ripper is right here in this file."

Hannibal used the pretence of retrieving his umbrella to take a moment to compose himself. His mind was whirling with the idea of Will sitting there, confessing, embracing that terrible fate he had been so afraid of all those years, ever since Molly Foster had gone into the system. The confusion gripped him like a delirium. _'Why Will? Why did you do that?'_ he wondered silently in his mind.

He turned back to Beverley with a renewed veneer of control. "What does Agent Crawford have to say about this?"

"Oh I..." Her face fell a little. "I haven't gone to him with it yet."

"I see."

Beverley was frowning, sensing a caveat coming from his stony expression. "You don't think he'll act on this, do you?"

"I believe," he began, and winced for her benefit, "I believe he would want to. The question is more whether he will be able to. Without an alternative suspect, I fear that there will be no appetite to pursue this amongst the FBI higher echelons."

"The Chesapeake Ripper is still out there and still killing. Hell, I'd put money on that recent case with the old couple all strung up being him; fits his sick MO."

That deduction caused him a pang of sadness. Beverley Katz really was an excellent Agent and he was a little sorry that her position on his chessboard was what it was. He smiled at her words all the same, warmly.

"This isn't about the FBI, or the BSU, or anyone in it. This is about saving lives. They _have_ to listen to me." She sounded a little frantic at the intimation that, despite all her work, it might still all come to nothing.

"A noble sentiment," he conceded. "I suppose you must ask yourself, how much would you be willing to lose for this cause?"

Beverley stared at him, a dark sheen of concern passing across her weary eyes. She looked a little rattled by his words but he knew that she would recover herself soon enough. She was plucky that way. _If only she knew that I expect an answer to that question_ , he thought.

"Forgive me, I must be going," he said, with a gracious bow, and saw her out.

Hannibal hurried to the hospital, regretting that he had lost so much time already seeing to everything and hoping that he was not too late already.

Though the seizure had been mild, it had triggered a coma of sorts which was keeping Will hospitalised. Hannibal expected that his case was a source of some puzzlement to the medical professionals. After all, they had no way to know that this complete mental shutdown was a triggered reaction, one designed to allow his mind to safely open the floodgates of his fortress of memories and start the unpacking process without distractions.

But any time now, Will would be waking up from his long sleep, and Hannibal was determined to be there when that happened.

It was easy to gain access to Will's hospital bed by flashing his credentials as a medical professional and he was pleased to find that Will had been placed in a room of his own, with one of the FBI's men standing guard. They thought nothing of his remaining there for hours, watching over the handcuffed coma patient, since his face was fairly well known to them now.

Finally, his patience was rewarded. Hannibal felt a slight jolt of movement in Will's hand, covered as it was by his own, and his heart lurched upwards as he leaned closer, watching intently for more movement. "Will," he whispered. "Time to wake up."

That caused Will's eyelashes to flutter and the first hint of crystalline blue to appear.

Hannibal couldn't help the softness of his expression, or the way he was clinging onto Will's hand, the dreaded feeling of hope poisoning him from head to toe. He held his breath, waiting for Will to come back to consciousness, gripped with a momentary lapse into fear that it might not have worked; that something might have gone wrong.

Then, the muted and expectant hush gave way to a soft, "Hannibal," and Will's face crumpled with tears.

That did it. "I'm here, my love. I'm here," he said and choked on his own wellspring of emotions. No power on earth, including the fear of being caught, could have prevented Hannibal from answering Will's desperate sobs by holding onto the sides of his head and kissing the tears away.

"But... but they killed you..." Will gasped, almost too wracked with tears to form any discernible words.

Hannibal rested his forehead against his, so overwhelmed with relief he felt nearly paralysed. "Who killed me?" he breathed.

"In Italy... you were dead... I saw..." His words were cut off with a fresh round of sobs, and Will was suddenly clinging onto him, pulling him close, desperately.

The penny finally dropped and Hannibal felt uncharacteristically stupid for not having seen it before. Will had seen him stabbed, seen him as he fell to the ground like a stone, then he'd seen him get dragged away and thrown into a van. Of course, when he had not reappeared to help, or got word to him in some way later, Will must have believed the worst.

He suddenly knew exactly why Will had confessed and thrown himself into the rehabilitation system. He'd thought he was alone. He'd wanted, as Katz said, "to forget".

Hannibal kissed him so hard it was bruising, devouring. He felt overwhelmed by the surge of white hot pain in his chest just thinking about the depths of despair Will must have reached, aching to undo it all. "Will Graham, I am here and I'm with you. I found you, just like I promised I would." He stroked Will's bald scalp, reveling in the simple pleasure of being able to touch him again at last, even though he missed the soft curls that should have been there.

Footsteps were approaching, so reluctantly Hannibal separated himself from Will and wiped his face over with his sleeve. The mask of indifference was back in place by the time a Doctor appeared to check up on Will.

He stepped out and busied himself attempting to retrieve coffee from a vending machine, purely as something to do, not because he would ever drink a drop of that foul stuff. When the Doctor came out of the room, he asked her a few asinine questions and introduced himself as a former surgeon, charming her into telling him how long Will would have to remain under observation.

A few more hours, in all probability, was the response, based on the fact that a few tests were still outstanding.

Hannibal thanked her and returned to Will's room, where his love was laying prone in the bed, staring like he was seeing an apparition, clearly not quite sure if he was dreaming. Hannibal gave him another kiss, just to reinforce that this was real and that he was there. Then he took the seat beside him with a purposeful expression.

"Will, we have much to discuss. I'm sorry that this ordeal is not yet over," he said. "You will need to pretend that you do not remember who you are for some time yet."

Will said nothing; he just clung onto the hand that was given to him, the blue of his eyes somehow magnified by all his tearful confusion.

"It will take a while for your memories to find their way back into order and many will not resurface for some time. I will help you through, as I always have. The important thing I want you to focus on is the trust that you have in me."

"I just want... I want to go home." Will already looked younger than usual, deprived of all hair and stubble as he was, so gaunt and wasted away, but the fear in his eyes regressed him even further, all the way back to childhood. He couldn't remember ever seeing Will quite so open and lost in their former life, even at the start of their relationship when he had been so afraid of his own shadow, avoiding eye contact with the world for fear of revealing his true darkness to it.

"I am going to free you and I am going to take my pound of flesh for this," he said, running his thumb over the tattooed number on his skull and across to the curved hint of a scar from some procedure or other of Dr Chilton's devising.

A hand went to his, the meat of Will's wrist far too bony and slender for his liking. Will said nothing, just held on and closed his eyes, as if seeking out a half lost thought or, perhaps, a memory. Hannibal ached to pull him close and listen to his mind whirring, putting order into chaos, all those little cherished moments returning, Hannibal his anchor throughout.

"How do you feel?"

Will clung on a little tighter. "Like I'm falling. It's all speeding by too fast." He finally opened his eyes again and gazed at the man beside his bed. "It's really you."

There would be time for discussion, for planning and organisation later. For now, Hannibal wanted nothing more than to cradle him through the turbulence ahead. It would be easy to rest now and bask in the glow of bringing Will back, the only person in the world who'd ever completely understood him, serrated edges and all, and who still loved him all the same.

But of course, there was still work to be done.

*

He took Beverley Katz on her way home from picking up some groceries, using chloroform to knock her out. Then he drove out to one of his storage facilities outside of the city where he kept most of his supplies. He was going to need his cold storage unit, his heavy duty band saw and some of the glass panes he had set aside there for this particular task.

He did everything with an unusual level of solemnity. It wasn't so much that he regretted what had to happen because he had a degree of respect for her, more than he knew that Will would not be pleased when he found out. He would accept it, but not happily. The sad fact was, it was a simple matter of trade off. Someone had to die and, unwittingly, Beverley had been the one being herded into his crosshairs for some time.

Hannibal didn't want to prolong her suffering, but nor did he want to dishonour her by killing her without allowing her a moment to finally see the Sword of Damocles that had been dangling over her head the whole time. She deserved that much. So he secured her to an old wheelchair and waited for her to come around, making sure he was right there in her line of sight when she awoke.

To her credit, the moment she saw him and noticed her surroundings, she started to fight, kicking against the ties on her hands and feet. But the wheelchair was a solid, steady thing, and there was no way for her to get free of it.

"I'm sorry that this is how it must be," he said, once she'd stopped flailing, apparently realising how futile her efforts were.

Beverley's eyes were like daggers and he could see her mind working overtime to figure out what was happening and what to do. "What the hell is this?" she wheezed, out of breath from her attempts to escape. "Why are you doing this?"

"I asked you how much you would be willing to lose to prove Will innocent. I'm sorry to say, the price is a high one."

Whatever she saw in his expression caused her to recoil. "You bastard," she said, very quietly. "It was you. The whole time... That's why you knew Fivey didn't do it. You're the Ripper, aren't you?"

He smiled at her, once again struck by how smart she could be when she put her heart into it. It really was a shame that she had to be the one.

"Yes," he said. "Although come tomorrow, I will be gladly passing the title on to Dr Chilton. It was an unfortunate mishap that you happened to go to him and inform him that you were attempting to prove his prisoner, the man he framed, innocent. Fortunately, in his anger, he is going to make a few small errors... and you, as a forensics expert, will do all you can to ensure his DNA trace is kept on your body somehow." He pointed towards a set of Petri dishes on his workstation as he said that, letting her know that he had all the ingredients ready. "You will catch him for the FBI as your last act." He paused, as though amused by a sudden thought. "You are going to be well honoured by your colleagues for your bravery. Perhaps they will name a laboratory after you. I will certainly recommend it."

"Oh god," she gasped and tears started rolling down her cheeks. "You don't have to do this... please..."

"I'm afraid I do. As we discussed, the FBI will not admit their error. They will not free Will while they do not have a suspect. I'm going to give Jack Crawford everything he needs."

"Why the hell do you care whether he's free or... oh..." Something approximating grim laughter erupted from her and she tried to kick out in anger. "Oh you've got to be fucking kidding me. I can't believe I didn't see it. This whole thing, you orchestrated it all to get him out. What was he to you, Dr Lecter? Your friend? A relative?" She looked singularly disgusted seeing the answer flit over his face. "You're in love with him, aren't you," she said finally, not even making it a question.

He leaned over her, placing his hands on the sides of the wheelchair, not shying away from eye contact. "In another life, I feel we may have been friends," he said and ignored her snort of derision. "I am sorry that the price of Will's freedom is so high."

Hannibal stood and moved around behind her, out of her line of sight, and he heard her breath catch. There was a looking glass on the workstation in front of them, reflecting the scene.

He was pleased to see the look of defiance that Beverley Katz wore as he told her that he would make it quick did not falter, even as his hands snaked around her neck, preparing to make the final snap that would end her life.

She really was plucky, right until the end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up, the final chapter...


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, here we go, final chapter! Sincere thanks to everyone who has stuck around and followed this fic. I can't tell you how much I appreciate it!

 

The process of unpacking memories turned out to be a surprisingly painful process, happening as it was in bursts. Will was fine some days and debilitated by headaches on others. Confusion and a sense of displacement had become his constant companion.

He had the distinct impression of being five or six separate people, all coexisting in one space. He was the child who never knew his mother and made an icon of her until he was old enough to know better. He was the Will who went to the FBI Academy, filled with hope about the good he might do in the world. He was the Will who watched Hannibal flip a coin from his hospital bed, not knowing that he was standing a very dark precipice, about to fall headfirst. He was the Will who saw Hannibal murdered in Italy and woke up screaming for him in the night. He was the Will who was mourning Beverley and raging at Hannibal for trading his life for hers. On top of them all, he was still 54609, still living in irrational fear shock treatments and drugs, a lost soul with no future and no understanding of himself.

He guessed it was an unfortunate side effect of the process that he couldn't resolve all the fragments of himself yet. He kept falling between the cracks of his memories and no matter how much Hannibal tried to guide him, he felt too often hostile to really accept the help. Too many pieces of him were either afraid of Hannibal or just plain angry with him.

Crawford was allowing him to remain at the Academy, since the new Interim Director of the Baltimore State Home for the Reformed Criminal Element was too busy firefighting the media scrum to want him anywhere near the place. He wasn't needed at Dr Chilton's trial and, since he'd been taken to see Beverley's sliced up and artfully displayed corpse and, on Hannibal's command, had to emphasise a link between that killer and the Archimedes case, they hadn't needed him for anything. Crawford was keeping him close more, it seemed, out of a sense of guilt than anything else.

The only time he was able to stop pretending to have no memories, as was expected, was in the weekly psychiatric sessions with Hannibal, and that's when it inevitably became confusing. It was easier in some ways not to have to confront his memories and the disparate parts of himself.

He'd only allowed Hannibal the sort of contact the man was clearly craving once so far, after working himself up into a frenzy with two memories swirling together - Hobbs pointing the gun at Beverley's head, and Delfonso pointing the gun at Arnie Oliver's head, in a combined and explosive scene that got his heart racing - and he'd let Hannibal hold onto him and press him down on the chaiselong, using his weight as a blanket, his scent calming him. Will had wanted to fold into him and take the comfort he was offering, so badly it hurt his head, but the parts of him that weren't relieved were still too angry to do so.

He could see that he was hurting Hannibal by being so cold and withdrawn. It wasn't that he was ungrateful for the lengths the man had gone to to find him, to wake him up and exonerate him. It wasn't that he didn't understand why Hannibal had used Beverley as the means to throw the blame onto Dr Chilton. If anything, his anger was a little tempered knowing that the odious Chilton would be receiving some of his own bitter medicine soon enough. Will just didn't understand himself anymore and it made being who Hannibal wanted him to be - that man who had grown to kill by his side and who had loved him beyond reason - too hard.

Will remained at the FBI for around three months while the trial progressed. He was technically still a prisoner, so the appearance of being under lock and key had to be maintained, but he was being allowed far more liberties. Nobody there thought he was really guilty anymore. They were mostly just sorry for him. He soon noticed that servers in the canteen were giving him extra servings, trying to fatten him up. Brian Zeller migrated a whole pile of books, mostly crime novels, into his living quarters to keep him going. Jimmy Price got him a whole new wardrobe that didn't consist of blue jumpsuits (the man had surprisingly good taste) and though he wasn't allowed off the premises without an escort, he was allowed, finally, to let his hair grow. The relief that came with seeing those big black numbers slowly disappear behind the follicles of dark hair was probably more cathartic and soothing than anything else that had happened. Slowly, he was beginning to feel like a real person again.

Inevitably, the day came when Jack Crawford appeared in his quarters with an ominous air.

"I'm going to have to ask you to come with me," he told him, expression schooled into an impassive glare.

Will's first instinct was to duck his head and not question him, but then he remembered that, no, he didn't need to do that anymore. He had the power to speak up at long last. "What's happened?" he asked, putting his book to one side.

Instead of answering, Crawford extended his arm outwards of the door, into the corridor, and just waited for him to comply.

Inevitably, he found himself following direction, and discovered Price and Zeller waiting outside. There was an odd expectant pause between them all, and then Price gave him an awkward hug. Will looked to Zeller over his shoulder with questioning eyes.

"Beverley knew what she was talking about, as always," he said in response, and looked pained. He pulled Jimmy back and handed Will an iPad. "We've loaded up everything we could find on record about who you are, your past and everything, on here. It's not much but... well, it might help."

"You're a free man," Crawford said, a half smile trying to break out on his normally stern features.

Finally he realised; the trial had to be over. The thought of Chilton with a number on his skull probably should have stirred something better in him than it did; he distinctly remembered feeling empathy for Garret Jacob Hobbs, at the thought of him going through the system the way he had, but no such feeling was coming now. Perhaps he had been a better man when he hadn't known who he was. Or maybe this was simply a return to who he really was.

And, right on cue, standing at the end of the corridor was Hannibal, his coat draped over his hands, a quirk of a smile on his lips, a flickering fluorescent bulb above him making his shadow look alive.

"What now?" Will asked, unable to pull his eyes away from him.

"You'll be put up in a house, sort of a halfway facility, not far from here, until proper arrangements can be figured," Crawford told him. "This is all pretty unprecedented so we're going to have to make do for now."

"You're going to be able to live in a mansion when the State pays out for all this," Price said and earned a jab from Zeller.

"Couldn't I stay here?"

The flickering bulb kept plunging him into Hannibal's office, where he sat staring at the stag with the light machine flashing beside it, and back again. It made his heart beat faster and his guts clench with an uncomfortable sensation of need. Hannibal was flickering between man and monster, his shadow becoming the demon stag with raven feathers, there to claim him once and for all.

"Unfortunately not, but once things are sorted out, we might be able to discuss the option of putting your talents to use here officially." Crawford patted him on the back and it startled him back to himself. "You're free," he repeated, apparently unsure that Will was taking it in.

Will gave him the smile that they all seemed to be expected. "I don't know what that means," he admitted.

He was invited to follow them and was afforded a quiet moment to say farewell to the science team, where he was repeatedly induced to make half-meant promises to keep in touch, and then, for the first time, he was allowed to leave the building, his wrists feeling bare without the usual handcuffs.

Hannibal remained behind him the entire time, a solid but silent presence, and when they stepped outside into the rain, Will couldn't help but reach for his hand, caught in the memory of the first time and last time he had done so in Florence. The gesture was deflected with a masterful turn that snapped him back to the present, and while Will knew that Hannibal had to maintain a professional distance because they were in public, it hurt a lot more than he expected. He knew he had no right to feel rejected after months of spurning Hannibal's desire to be close to him, but he couldn't help it now that he was starting to feel like his old self again. All the old dark coiling sensations of want were starting to writhe in his belly and there was no one else who could sate them. No matter how angry he felt about Beverley's death, and how much he still wished to punish Hannibal for it, he could feel his damnation coming. There was nothing he could do about it.

Crawford instead loomed large and directed him down the steps towards a car, eager to get out of the wet. Will was unsurprised when he discovered that Hannibal was in the driver's seat; of course he was driving a Bentley. He was bundled into the back while Crawford took up the passenger seat.

While the two men in the front discussed the provisions available to Will at the halfway house facility, Hannibal seeking full reassurances about it, Will tuned them out and read through the articles saved onto the iPad, bemused at the thought of Zeller spending hours compiling it for him. There was nothing too intimate to be found, though it was good to see a copy of his time of death monolith saved there amongst the various fragments of information compiled from online sources and the NOPD database. He was impressed Zeller had located a copy of his birth certificate, but there wasn't much more of interest beyond that.

Eventually, after a long drive north to Baltimore, they pulled up to a small jail and Will was ushered out and around the side into a parking lot at the back where a facility truck was waiting. He had a moment of panic, immediately thinking it was there for him, but logic quickly reasserted itself. It could be for him. He was free. _He was free._

"I thought you deserved to have this moment," Crawford told him, cryptically.

The back doors of the jailhouse were flung open by a cop. Dr Chilton was a particularly diminutive figure in a jumpsuit, trapped between two burly goons of the like Will was very familiar with from his time at the Home. Though handcuffed and held securely, Chilton was struggling, still protesting his innocence.

The moment he saw Will and the two men standing behind him like pillars, he tried to pull closer. "This is preposterous!" he was yelling. "I didn't do this! You know I didn't do this!"

Will stepped forward, putting himself right by the truck waiting to take the man away. "You would not be here if you had not done something extremely deserving, believe me. We are not in the business of treating the innocent," he growled, a thousand moments of frustration and pain welling up in him at last, the poison bursting from the wound. "The therapeutic and rehabilitative treatments are for your own good and for the good of society as a whole. There is no alternative." There was no pity in his voice, just a mocking mimicry of the oft repeated phrases he had heard in his darkest moments.

That shut the prisoner up and he merely stared at Will, going pale, as they bundled him into the back of the truck. It seemed to be a moment of dawning realisation for Frederick Chilton, that everything he had ever dished out was finally going to be paid back.

The doors of the truck banged closed with a satisfying finiteness and, together, the three of them watched it drive away.

"Goodbye  _Frederick_ ," Will spat and smiled to himself, overwhelmed with just how good that had felt.

"Let's go," Crawford prompted, gently, and Will followed them back to the car happily, feeling oddly absolved of his sins. He wondered if Hannibal felt the same way, letting go of the Chesapeake Ripper for good, just like that.

They got back onto the road, Will silent in the back of the car, watching the flashing lights of the city traffic, until they finally pulled up outside a townhouse of grey bricks, surrounded by trees.

"Well, this is it," and Crawford made to get out of the car.

"Hold on," Will spoke up, finally. "You um... you said I'm free now. I'm a free man."

"Of course."

"Then I... I get to choose where I go." He was trying to keep the slightly nervous quirk from his voice, trying to put 54609 to one said, to let Will Graham speak out and take control again. "I don't want this."

"What do you want?" Hannibal asked, looking at him in the rearview mirror, his eyes sparkling with half suppressed hope that caught in his throat and made his voice scratchier than he probably intended.

"I need... I feel I've been making a lot of progress under Dr Lecter's care," he said, trying to sound firm. "I want to... stay with him."

Crawford looked at Hannibal, uncomfortably. "I'm not sure the Doctor..."

"It would be no trouble, I assure you," Hannibal practically snapped, though the veneer of politeness just about held him in check.

"It's not a matter of trouble, it could be inappropriate, given your professional interest in this case."

Hannibal smiled the toothy smile of a shark. "My involvement with this case has invalidated much of my research. I assure you, I have no interest in studying Mr Graham further. I believe Mr Graham knows that I would only accommodate him as a friend, not as a patient."

"I'm really grateful for everything you've done for me, Agent Crawford," Will said, in the moment of awkward silence that followed, "but I've made my decision. I think Dr Lecter can help me... I trust him."

In the end, there wasn't a lot Crawford could say on the matter. They both knew that. Hannibal ran Jack home, though it took him an hours or two out of their way, and they both said farewell to him in his driveway.

"I never want to see him again," Will said, quietly, as they pulled away. At Hannibal's nod of acknowledgement, he finally began to relax. He curled his fingers over Hannibal's in the space between their seats and dreamily watched him through half lidded eyes, all the way home.

*

The last thing he expected on arriving in Hannibal's palatial property was to be taken directly through it and out into the back garden, where a large shed was taking up most of the space. He watched Hannibal secure his back door, frowning with curiosity, and stared at him as he opened the shed up.

Will's heart leapt, further than he could ever remember, as dog after dog came pouring out and ran to him. His face cracked apart and ached for the size of his grin. Bruno, Tito, Oria, Viola and little Paoli, every one of his Italian dogs miraculously there with them. Will kneeled down in the wet mud, overwhelmed with joy, five excited dogs running around him, licking and pawing at him.

"How?" he gasped, breathless with excitement, trying to pet every single one of them.

The slightly proud look on Hannibal's face told Will that he'd been waiting a long time to see Will reunited with his pack.

It was then that Will noticed a sixth sandy coloured dog, a mutt with bright eyes, sitting at Hannibal's feet and watching him. "Who's that?"

"Winston," Hannibal replied, as if he'd almost forgotten to make an introduction. "I found him on the road near Wolf Trap. I suppose I picked up some bad habits from you."

An emotive softness overcame Will's features. "Wolf Trap? My house?"

Hannibal smiled and bowed his head a little. "A benevolent private buyer is holding it in trust for you."

"Thank you," Will whispered, and held his hand out to Winston, inviting him closer. Winston looked up to Hannibal briefly, looking for direction, Receiving none, he trotted over to Will and the rest of the dogs to join in the petting.

"I will start preparing dinner. When you're ready to come inside, I will show you the washroom."

"I'll be in soon."

"There's no hurry," Hannibal said, with an air of deep satisfaction. "None at all."

Will watched him go back inside, the last few shards of ice in his heart melting away. He was genuinely overwhelmed by the gesture, knowing how difficult it must have been to smuggle his little pack out of Europe, how hard it must have been to care for them alone all this time without him.

"He really never gave up on me," he muttered to the dogs, and sniffed away the mist passing across his eyes.

Eventually he managed to pull himself away from his surprise reunion and concentrated on settling the dogs back in the shed. He was amused to find that every dog had their own smaller kennel inside and that the shed was well stocked with food, water and toys. Hannibal had as much thought into the interior design of the shed as he did with all his spaces; the thought of it amused him probably more than it should have.

When they were all settled again, he made his way back to the house, kicking off his shoes before entering to avoid trailing any mud inside. He was greeted with the mouthwatering and long lost smell of Hannibal's cooking.

Hannibal had changed out of his suit and was looked a great deal more casual in a red sweater and brown pants, all half hidden under a white apron, his feet bare on the floor. He smiled on seeing Will enter and turned down the heat on the stove, giving himself time to lead Will upstairs and show him into the guest bedroom he remembered so well. There, he was given the privacy to take a shower and rummage through some of the clothes he had left behind there before their fleeing visit abroad. Will was a little perturbed to find them all rather loose, his bones stripped of the healthy extra layer of flesh and muscle he'd previously had. It reminded him of just how much of himself he'd lost in those two years of separation and pain.

He padded back downstairs just as Hannibal was serving up a steak dish, garnished with traditional cabbage and carrots, some fluffy mashed potato on the side with a gravy sauce, nothing too fancy, just the way he used to like it. The cut of meat was not beef, but that didn't surprise him. Although early on Will had attempted to gently redirect Hannibal away from his cannibalistic tendencies, it was too ingrained in his pathology, too integral to his philosophies of humanity and godhood, to be so easily halted. Inevitably, he'd stopped trying and, in time, indulged him on his desire to share.

It really was like coming home, sitting with Hannibal at his table, a glass of wine in one hand and a sparkle in his eye. All the different versions of Will were finally coming together with the soothing certainty of returning there, seeing his dogs again, and remembering the love he'd felt for this strange, brilliant, cruel, gentle monster in human skin.

Once the meal was finished, Hannibal lit a fire and they settled down beside it with some scotch, the more than two years apart forgotten in an instant with the familiarity of the old ritual of companionship.

"I think perhaps it is time to talk about Italy," Hannibal said, and apologised for not being able to get word to him that he was alive. He recounted his precarious escape to the storage facility on the edge of city. He described the infection he'd wrestled with and how it had prevented him from doing anything to intervene before Will was extradited.

They hadn't discussed what had happened back then in their therapeutic sessions, Will too lost in his manic attempts to understand and reorder all the memories assaulting his senses and far too hostile to discuss things rationally. He was far calmer now and he guessed Hannibal could sense that he was more or less himself again, at long last.

Will listened and gazed at him with half lidded eyes. His words painted pictures in his mind, of Hannibal injured and all alone in Florence. A sharp pang of anger shocked him when Hannibal recounted how surprised he had been when the Chesapeake Ripper murders were somehow pinned on Will, and how he'd done everything he could to make the FBI and the media reconsider, staging several murders during the trial to try and derail it. But he wasn't angry at Hannibal. In a flash, he knew exactly what he needed to do to finally draw a line under the entire ordeal.

But that would wait for another day. For now, he wanted nothing more than to be close to Hannibal again, reaffirming their bond.

"Show me the scar," he commanded, the old mischief returning to him. "I want to see it."

Hannibal regarded him with an unreadable expression, and then set his glass down. He removed his shirt and threw it aside, leaning a little to allow Will access to the jagged cut in his side, where that mafia knife had done the damage. He shivered a little as Will leaned over and ran his fingers over he puckered skin, and then sighed as Will's lips brushed over it. He sank back, eyes closed, breathing hard, apparently somewhat overcome by the gesture. "Will," he gasped like a sinner in confession.

"Do you still have your other scar?" Will asked, and relished the way the question made him tense up.

Slowly, Hannibal stood up and removed his pants and briefs, his half hardness springing free, and put one leg up on the couch to let Will see.

The initials WG remained there, carved in a position correspondent to his operation scar, where he'd placed it on Hannibal's flesh one night after a particularly exciting kill and energetic fuck that left Hannibal limping for days for several reasons. Will nudged closer and kissed along that unusually personal scar, the earthy smell of Hannibal at his most raw and open filling his senses and intoxicating him. He was tempted, so very tempted, to take him in his mouth, to finger him open and sheathe himself home, where he belonged.

Hannibal's tilted his chin upwards before the possessive desire overwhelmed him and their eyes met. He was astounded to see some very tangible emotions bursting out of Hannibal in a way he'd genuinely never imagined or seen before. He looked tired and overwhelmed; the last veneer of control appeared to have slipped.

Will let Hannibal slide down and settle against him, his bare skin soft against his rough clothes, his hands clinging on tightly as he was racked with sobs.

Nothing really needed to be said about it. Will slipped into Hannibal's mind easily, saw all the moments of despair and doubt that he'd been burying for two years for Will's sake, now suddenly let loose with the ultimate confirmation that Will was returned to him. He felt overwhelmed too.

He supposed their roles should have been reversed in some ways. After all, he was the one who had been dehumanised and tortured, but Will supposed that losing his memories had, ironically perhaps, made it a little better. He at least hadn't known what he was missing. Hannibal had and he'd borne it for both of them.

Every man had his limits, even the very devil himself.

They slept curled around each other, all presence of hesitancy or discomfort in each other's presence shed like the ill fitting coat it always was, any initial arousal felt replaced with a more tender need to affirm their closeness with slow kisses and the freedom to touch again.

Will slipped in and out of sleep and every time he opened his eyes, he knew Hannibal was awake, watching him. At long last, he felt safe again.

*

"You're certain?" Hannibal asked, though he patently knew the answer from the hard lines of Will's expression. In fact he hadn't stopped glaring since they'd arrived at the beachhouse where their target slept.

They had parked up under cover of darkness, concealed even though the moon was bright and casting an eerie glow over the mists rolling distantly over the bay.

The natural tranquility of the place hadn't been disturbed by their presence, though inevitably, it was going to be pretty soon.

A more rational Will might have reasoned away this dark urge he'd been feeling ever since Hannibal had told him of the lengths he'd gone to in order to prove him innocent during the Ripper trial. He might even excused all the online stories of a coverup, and the jigsaw pieces conveyed by Crawford to Hannibal about certain influences in the FBI wanting the case closed, whatever the cost. Will was not interested in being rational now.

This was what he needed to be free, truly and fully; the final catharsis to bring him back together and make him whole again.

"I need to do this. Myself." His tone telling Hannibal not to argue. "Give me fifteen minutes, then bring the clean up kit."

Will got out of the car, bag in hand, and slid his way through the underbrush surrounding the private locale, gracefully padding towards the property and scuffing his tracks behind him as he went.

He would only need fifteen minutes to do what he needed to do.

Will covered the floor of the living space in a sheet of plastic, then he sneaked into the bedroom where he target slept, and woke her up with a noose around her neck. No sooner was she awake than she was strung up above the sheet, her weight borne by a beam, the rope pulled and tied so she was only just high enough to allow her to breathe if she hopped on her tiptoes. Uncomfortable but livable, for now.

Kade Prurnell gasped and choked, tears streaming down her face, as she tried to bargain and plea for her life. At first she didn't even seem to know who he was, so he took a moment to remind her.

He was the reason she was on a paid sabbatical, though the farce of an investigation that had proceeded within the FBI had cleared her with ease, thanks to her many friends in high places. She was taking a holiday while the media heat died down but was due back at work soon enough. While Will hadn't got far in the FBI all those years ago, there was a certain sense of coming full circle in the taking of this particular Agent's life. In a funny way, even though he'd never had the chance to do the good he'd wanted to do, he felt like he was putting the darkness inside him to good use in this case. It made a frightening sort of sense.

The look of rage and spitting hatred on her face as she realised who he was just convinced him that he was doing the right thing. She probably thought that she had been right all along, but that was okay; she half was. And dead women tell no tales after all.

When the fifteen minutes was up, Hannibal stepped into the beachhouse as expected and a little sigh of pleasure escaped his lips at the sight that awaited him; Will covered in the spray of arterial blood that had burst from her cut throat, his eyes wild, his smile triumphant, a coin idly flipped up and down in the air in his slippery hands. Though in that moment, he couldn't quite read Hannibal's expression directly, he knew the response he was courting by waiting for him like that.

There was a reason he'd refused the idea of wearing a plastic suit for this. He wanted to feel her blood on his face and body and to see the reaction to it.

The predator in Hannibal was woken up and the bag he was carrying hit the deck with a heavy thud. He strode across the room and kissed Will to within an inch of his life, not caring that he was getting covered in the sticky red as well, or that Will's plastic gloves were sticking to his skin.

"Welcome back, Will Graham," he growled, grinding against him a little, "my love, my soul..."

Will pushed him down into the still-growing pool of blood and frantically stripped his pants off, some animal need overwhelming him. He freed Hannibal's hardness just enough, not even taking the time to strip his clothes off beyond his thighs, and immediately impaled himself. The pain took his breath away but he loved it, memories cascading over him and reminding him of how to relax, how to take the burn and turn it into the best kind of pleasure, knowing every curve and ridge of what was sinking into him and exactly where it felt good. Even Hannibal looked overwhelmed by his actions, writhing though he was in open-mouthed pleasure with Will hot and wet with blood against him. Will was soon riding him with absolute abandon, crying out with the relief of no longer feeling any conflict or guilt, breathing in harsh barks, going harder and harder until he was near sobbing at the extremes of sensation.

He finally sagged down with his release and Hannibal held him tightly through his own. They were each left panting and clinging tightly together, limbs aching from the hardness of the floor and the roughness of the act itself. Beside them, Kade Prurnell was dangling with glassy eyes and around them the blood was starting to get too close to the edges of the plastic sheet. It was a ridiculous scene but Will was not sorry, not even slightly.

Hannibal carefully extracted himself from Will and seated him down while he reached across for another sheet and covered the space between them and the front door. He then picked Will up and, despite his surprised grunt of protest, carried him outside, down the private beach and dropped him into the ocean with a laugh.

He heard Will swear at him before making a retreat back inside to clean up, eager to get it done quickly and painlessly. By the time he was finished, Kade Prurnell was in three pieces, wrapped up in bags, all of her personal items confiscated. He was confident that nothing at all would be found to suggest foul play; they would assume she had skipped town and the media, if they cared enough to run a story, would make it sound like she had a lot to run from.

After putting the body pieces into sealed metal boxes in his trunk for easy transportation to somewhere well out of the way, and doing a final clear of the scene to ensure nothing whatsoever was out of place and nothing had been left that might raise questions, Hannibal used her keys to lock the beachhouse up and went to find Will.

It was hard to see anything with only the moon for light and the mists rolling by, so he didn't see Will sneaking up behind him. He wasn't at all surprised however when Will pushed him over into the water and at least managed to bring him down as well.

They lay together on the sand, Hannibal on his back with Will half on top of him, kissing his salty lips while the tide rolled in and out around them noisily, washing the blood away and leaving them clean. Then they went back to the car and put on the plastic suits they hadn't used for the scene in order to avoid tracking any sand into the car.

Hannibal drove Will into a forest on the outskirts of Baltimore which he had long since favoured as a good place to bury the remains of his victims, due to its remoteness, and where one of his many small private lockups was held. They buried Prurnell under one of the trees, dawn edging the sky with pinkish tones, and then they burned everything, including their clothes, in a can.

Before heading back to the lockup to get showered and changed, Hannibal put a hand on Will's shoulder and stared deeply into his eyes "What now Will?" he asked. "You have taken your pound of flesh. So what now?"

Will was silent for a long moment, his eyes glinting in the new light of the morning. "I want to leave," he replied. It was the only thing that made sense to him now; even though he'd been offered a de facto position with the FBI as a not-quite-Agent - a not-quite dream come true really - he knew he couldn't do it. He couldn't look Crawford, Price and Zeller in the eye day after day and pretend to be one of them. Not after Beverley. Not even after Kade Prurnell. "Sell everything, my house and yours. Take the dogs. Close your practice down. Retire. Go somewhere nobody knows us. Write some papers. Get old."

"Back to Europe?" Hannibal hummed in approval at the idea.

"Anywhere."

Hannibal drew him close, his nose running over the soft new hair that had grown over the tattooed number on Will's skull, obliterating it.

They both smiled when they realised that it was starting to rain again, a shared glance telling each other that they were thinking the very same thing, hands slipping together and at last taking back a moment that had been stolen from them before.

"I must warn you, as your Doctor..." Hannibal began, finally.

"Oh, as my Doctor," Will echoed sarcastically.

"... I should warn that it can be unhealthy to revisit places where a great trauma has been suffered. I fear we cannot return to Italy at least, or any of the places we previously explored..."

"Please," Will interjected, "don't psychoanalyse me." He bit him on the lip, playfully, and looked rather too pleased with himself for it.

Hannibal nipped him back and smiled. "Wouldn't dream of it," he said, shaking his head, knowing he was going to have his hands full wherever they went or whatever they did and welcoming every second of madness that awaited them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're still in the mood for some fic, here's a few of my other efforts you might like:
> 
> Long, plotty, Omegaverse story: [The Toccata and Fugue Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/62613)  
> Sleepwalking dark!Will fic: [Muscle Memory](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1131089/chapters/2284733)  
> Different ending to Savoureux, leading to murder husbands: [The Lure](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1178426/chapters/2402578)  
> Mpregtastic fic with super-tormented Will and super-bastardy Hannibal: [Klara's Story](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1339876/chapters/2792587)  
> Random vampire murder family fic, featuring Vampire!Will stalking Hannibal: [A Family of Monsters](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1868172/chapters/4022064)


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